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Iraq Resumes Regular Flights to Syria
Iraq on Monday resumed its regular flights to Syria after a hiatus of more than 20 years, Iraqi Minister of Transport and Communications Ahmad Murtadha Ahmad Khalil said.
An Iraqi Airways airliner took off from the Saddam International Airport at 16:00 local time (1300 GMT) with Damascus as its destination, Khalil said.
A local TV report said that Iraqi Trade Minister Mohammad Mehdi Salah was among the people on board the plane which had landed at Damascus.
This marked the formal resumption of regular flights between Baghdad and Damascus, Khalil said, adding that there would be two return flights, on Monday and Friday, between the two capitals each week.
The resumption of flights between the two countries came amid Baghdad's improved relations with Damascus as well as its intensified efforts to challenge the decade-old U.N. sanctions imposed on the country following its invasion of Kuwait in 1990.
Iraq, which severed relations with Syria as Syria supported Tehran in the eight-year Iran-Iraq war (1980-1988), normalized ties with Damascus in 1997.
Bilateral relations have since greatly been improved. Damascus has called for lifting the sanctions on Iraq, and has dispatched a number of planes to Iraq to show its solidarity for the Arab neighbor.
Abdul Karim Hamam, director-general of the Iraqi Airways, has expressed readiness to resume international flights with other countries, and aviation companies from Egypt and Jordan have recently re-started flights to the sanctions-hit country.
Iraq reopened the Saddam International Airport last August and resumed its domestic flights last November in an effort to defy the air embargo insisted by the United States and Britain. Iraq argued that there are no U.N. resolutions banning civilian flights.
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