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Jordan to Resume Regular Flights to Iraq: Spokesman
Jordan's national carrier, Royal Jordanian, is expected to resume regular passenger flights to Baghdad within a month, a cabinet spokesman said on Wednesday.
Those regular flights, based on Jordan's understanding of the relevant UN resolutions, do not violate the UN sanctions against Iraq, said Taleb Rifai, who is also information minister, at a regular weekly press briefing in Amman.
Royal Jordanian will make all necessary arrangements to restart the flights, Rifai said, adding the airways had conducted commercial flights to Baghdad over the past few months on humanitarian missions.
Jordan had to ask for prior approval from the UN sanctions committee on Iraq for those humanitarian flights.
However, Rifai stressed that Royal Jordanian's regular flights to Iraq do not violate UN resolutions imposed on Iraq following its 1990 invasion of Kuwait.
"We are calling for the lifting of the embargo on Iraq but we understand what is in the letter of these resolutions and we will stick to it," Rifai said.
Parties concerned with Iraq remain divided as to whether the UN sanctions embrace a ban on commercial flights to and from Iraq.
Many countries believe the flight ban has been insisted on only by the US and Britain. For years they have been calling for lifting the UN sanctions on Iraq to alleviate the plight of Iraqi people.
Baghdad said that over 1.5 million of its citizens, mostly the elderly and children, have died of lack of food and medicine, resulting from the crippling sanctions.
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