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Saudi Arabia Opens Land Border with Iraq
Saudi Arabia has opened its land border with Iraq, closed since the 1991 Gulf War, to facilitate transportation of Saudi exports under the UN oil-for-food program, a local newspaper reported Tuesday.
The English-language Arab News daily quoted Abdul Rahman al- Zamil, executive chairman of the Saudi Exports Development Center, as saying that the border opening would halve transport costs.
Saudi companies have recently won new contracts with an estimated value of 262 million Saudi riyals (69.87 million US dollars), said the newspaper.
Saudi firms had won contracts worth more than 2 billion riyals (533.3 million dollars) since the U.N. humanitarian program was launched in December 1996.
Iraq, which has been under crippling UN sanctions for its 1990 invasion of Kuwait, is linked to the outside world by land through Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Turkey and Syria and by sea route to the United Arab Emirates through the Gulf.
The land border between Saudi Arabia and Iraq has been closed for nine years, during which Iraq bitterly accuses Saudi Arabia of joining the US-led multi-national forces which drove Iraqi forces out of Kuwait in 1991 to end the seven-month occupation.
Saudi Arabia, along with Kuwait, allows US and Britain warplanes to fly from their bases to enforce the so-called non-fly zone in southern Iraq.
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