Iranian FM to Visit Iraq ThursdayIranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi will kick off a two-day visit to Iraq on Thursday, the official Babil newspaper reported Wednesday.Kharrazi will meet Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and other senior Iraqi officials to try to settle all the remaining problems left behind after the 1980-1988 bloody war between the two neighboring countries, the report said. Twelve years after the ending of the war, the two neighbors have not yet normalized their relations, which have been greatly hampered by such issues as the prisoners of war and armed opposition groups in each other's countries. Nevertheless, bilateral ties between the two former rivals have shown signs of improvement in recent days. A major breakthrough came on September 29, when Iranian President Mohammad Khatami met with Iraqi Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan in Caracas, Venezuela, on the sidelines of the summit meeting of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). The meeting has been regarded as the highest level of contact between the two sides in nine years. It was followed by a visit to Tehran by Iraqi Minister of Transport and Communications Ahmad Murtadha Ahmad Khalil earlier this month. During talks with his Iranian counterpart Mahmoud Hojjati, Khalil tried to seek Iran's greenlight to planes flying to Iraq through its airspace. Thanks to the visit, a Boeing 777 passenger plane from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) made a direct flight from Abu Dhabi, capital of the UAE, to Baghdad through Iranian airspace last Thursday. |
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