Iran Says It Holds No More Iraqi POWsHead of Iran's commission for prisoners of war (POWs) Brigadier General Abdollah Najafi said Sunday in Tehran that Iran holds no more Iraqi POWs.The official dismissed as "mere lies" Iraqi claims that Tehran is still holding 29,000 Iraqi soldiers. His statement came two days after Iran unilaterally released 728 Iraqi POWs. Iran said that it was the last group of Iraqi captives to be freed since the end of the eight-year war between the two neighbors in 1988. Iran has in the past years unilaterally released Iraqi POWs to show its goodwill and now it is Iraq's turn to do the same, Najafi was quoted by the Islamic Republic News Agency as saying. Since the start of the current Iranian year on March 20, Iran has released 4,117 Iraqi POWs, bringing the total number of freed Iraqi soldiers since 1988 to 59,830, the official said. He added that over 9,000 Iraqi POWs are not willing to return to Iraq and have sought refuge in Iran, including 7,307 who have expressed their wishes to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). The official confirmed that Iraq has freed 39,417 Iranian POWs since the end of the war, but insisting that at least 3,000 Iranian soldiers are still being held in Iraqi prisons. He urged the ICRC, which supervises the POW releases of both countries, and other international organizations, to exert pressure on Iraq to release remaining Iranian POWs. He accused Iraq of being not in favor of a full resolution of the POW issue and still impeding the process by launching negative propaganda against Iran. ICRC representatives are to meet in Geneva with an Iraqi delegation to decide the fate of the remaining Iranian POWs held in Iraq, he added. The POWs issue has been a key stumbling block to normalization of ties between the two countries, whose eight-year war cost nearly 1 million lives on both sides. |
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