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Iraq Ready to Have Dialog with Kuwait, Saudi Arabia
Iraq held out the olive branch to Kuwait and Saudi Arabia on Monday by suggesting that it was ready to hold a dialog with the two Arab foes.
"Iraq is ready to have a dialog with Kuwait and Saudi Arabia within the framework of Arab reconciliation if there will be a proper atmosphere and sincere intentions from the other parties," Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister and Acting Foreign Minister Tareq Aziz said Monday in a statement carried by the official Iraqi News Agency (INA).
The current Arab nations's status requires Arab countries to mend fences to confront challenges now and in the future, Aziz said.
Aziz rejected the so-called "smart sanctions" against Iraq as proposed by the United States and stressed the new U.S. scheme was doomed to failure, the INA said.
"The final format of the U.S. draft will be discussed at the U. N. Security Council at end of this month, and Iraq is holding deliberations with permanent members (of the U.N. Security Council) to unveil the ill-intentions of the draft," Aziz was quoted as saying.
U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said on May 3 that a new package of sanctions against Iraq would be ready in June and the U. S. had got support from its Arab friends in the region.
In the face of waning international support for the decade-old sanctions imposed on Iraq for its 1990 invasion of Kuwait, the U.S. said it wants to fine-tune the sanctions to relax restrictions on goods for civilian use while tightening control on imports of military equipment.
Aziz called on Turkey and other neighboring Arab countries "not to yield to U.S. pressure and attempts to implement the 'smart sanctions,' which will negatively inflict the economic and national interests of these countries."
Iraq has witnessed development in its relations with Syria, and "is ready to cooperate with Iran to solve all the outstanding issues between the two neighbors," Aziz said.
More than 12 years after the Iraq-Iran 1980-1988 bloody war, problems of prisoners of war and the hosting of opposition groups are sill plaguing bilateral relations.
However, there have been rapprochement between Iraq and other Arab countries such as Syria and Egypt, though both were members of the U.S.-led multinational coalition against Iraq in the 1991 Gulf War, triggered by Iraq's invasion of neighboring Kuwait in 1990.
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