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Iraq

Iraqi troops withdraw from Mosul

2017-11-01

Zummar (IraqiNews.com) Iraqi troops have gradually withdrawn from northwestern Mosul region, a sign that indicates easing tensions between Baghdad and Erbil, a security source said. “Federal Police’s reinforcement, which arrived earlier to Zummar, northwest of Mosul, have started to withdraw gradually,” Lt. Gen. Saadoun al-Dulaimi, of Federal Police, told Anadolu Agency on Tuesday. Troops were deployed in Zummar last week as confrontations occurred against Peshmerga. The move comes after ceasefire agreement was reached and series of talks took place on redeploying of Iraqi troops at disputed regions and border crossings. “The withdrawal takes place through few groups with its machinery, while army troops tasked with protecting the region remain,” Dulaimi added.

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Iraq

Iraq buys scrap metal rocket launchers from Rooshia

2015-01-14

On Sunday, the newspaper Vedomosti quoted sources in the Russian defense industry sector, that Russia in 2014 signed contracts to deliver a large batch of guns, rocket launchers and ammunition in the amount of one billion dollars to Iraq. According to the newspaper, the contracts were signed during the visit of the Iraqi military delegation, headed by the Minister of Defense, Saadoun al-Dulaimi, to Russia in 2014. The sources explained that Russia will supply to Iraq 2 or 3 systems of rocket launchers 'Grad' and a number of howitzers and a large number of mortars, in addition to four rocket launchers and flame throwers model 'Sulentsepyuk.' Won't do any good if the men handling them aren't any good... With the BM-27 you just have to get it in the right county. Don't ever give it to the Gazans, then. They've a terrible record when it comes to actually hitting the country they aimed at.

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Syria-Lebanon-Iran

Iran Says Ready to Expand Military Ties with Iraq

2011-12-26

[An Nahar] Iran stands ready to expand its military and security ties with Iraq, its armed forces chief of staff said Sunday, a week after the exit of U.S. forces from the neighboring Arab country. General Hassan Firouzabadi hailed the "forced departure" of the U.S. and allied forces that he said "was due to the resistance and determination of the Iraqi people and government," the state Islamic Theocratic Republic News Agency reported. The statements were made in messages Firouzabadi sent to his Iraqi counterpart, Lieutenant General Babaker Zebari, and to Iraq's acting defense minister, Saadoun al-Dulaimi, IRNA said. The departure of the U.S. troops "was due to the resistance and determination of the Iraqi people and government," he said. "I hope the humiliating failure of the United States after nine years of occupying Iraq will serve as a lesson for them to never think of attacking another country," he said. Firouzabadi added that Iran was now "ready to expand its military and security ties with Iraq." Zebari led a delegation of Iraqi military chiefs to Iran last month to explore greater cooperation between the two defense forces. U.S. analysts have expressed concern ...meaning the brow was mildly wrinkled, the eyebrows drawn slightly together, and a thoughtful expression assumed, not that anything was actually done or indeed that any thought was actually expended... that Iran could exploit the vacuum left by the U.S. withdrawal to bolster links with Iraq's Shiite-led government. The United States frequently accused Iran of arming Iraqi militias that attacked U.S. forces when they were deployed there. U.S. President Barack I've now been in 57 states -- I think one left to go Obama said on December 14 that, while the situation left behind in Iraq was not perfect, "we are leaving behind a sovereign, stable, and self-reliant Iraq." His administration has warned Iran against trying to interfere in Iraq.

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Iraq

Anbar insurgents claim al-Qaeda purged

2006-03-15

Insurgent groups in one of Iraq's most violent provinces claim they have purged the region of three-quarters of al Qaeda's supporters after forming an alliance to force out the foreign fighters. If true, it would mark a significant victory in the fight against Abu Musab Zarqawi, the head of al Qaeda in Iraq, and could partly explain the considerable drop in suicide bombings in Iraq recently. "We have killed a number of the Arabs including Saudis, Egyptians, Syrians, Kuwaitis and Jordanians," London Daily Telegraph quoted an insurgent representative in the western province of Anbar as saying. Iraq's Sunni Muslim insurgents had originally welcomed al Qaeda into the country, seeing it as a powerful ally in its fight against the American occupation. But relations became strained when insurgents supported calls for Sunnis to vote in the Dec. 15 election, a move they saw as essential to break the Shi'ite hold on government, but which al Qaeda viewed as a form of collaboration. It became an outright split when a wave of bombings killed scores of people in Anbar resulting in a spate of tit-for-tat killings. In reaction, the Sunni tribal leaders formed their own anti-al Qaeda militia, the Anbar Revolutionaries. The group has a core membership of about 100 people, all of whom had relatives killed by al Qaeda. It is led by Ahmed Ftaikhan, a former Saddam-era military intelligence officer, the Telegraph reported. The group claims to have killed 20 foreign fighters and 33 Iraqi sympathizers. The United States has confirmed that six of Zarqawi's deputies were killed in the city of Ramadi in the province. The Associated Press reported yesterday that an Anbar-based group has claimed it killed five top members of al Qaeda and associated groups in Ramadi. The claim was posted on an Islamist Web site and attributed to the Anbar Revenge Brigade, the AP reported. It listed the names of four suspected al Qaeda leaders. The fifth man, it said, was from Ansar al-Sunnah, a terrorist group affiliated with al Qaeda. Iraq, which has suffered under a brutal insurgency for nearly three years, more recently has been racked by sectarian violence after the bombing of a Shi'ite shrine Feb. 22 in Samarra. Afterward, Interior Ministry forces were accused of allowing Shi'ite militiamen loyal to radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr to conduct revenge attacks against Sunnis. Yesterday, police found four hanged men dangling from electricity pylons in Baghdad's Shi'ite Sadr City slum, hours after car bombs and mortars shells ripped through teeming market streets, killing at least 58 persons. Police said members of Sheik al-Sadr's Mahdi's Army militia had captured the four men on Sunday. The operations of militias and death squads have drawn criticism from U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad. Yesterday, the Iraqi Defense and Interior ministries said they have reached an agreement requiring them to conduct all raids jointly, in a bid to stop the operations of death squads masquerading as police commandos. Interior Minister Bayan Jabr, who controls Iraqi police, is a Shi'ite. Defense Minister Saadoun al-Dulaimi is a Sunni Muslim.

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Iraq

Iraqis Try to Put an End to Death Squads

2006-03-14

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - The Iraqi Defense and Interior ministries have reached an agreement requiring them to conduct all raids jointly, in a bid to stop the operations of alleged death squads masquerading as police commandos. Sunni Muslims have complained for months that their community is under attack from death squads operating under the guise of Interior Ministry commandos. Interior Minister Bayan Jabr, who controls Iraq police, is a Shiite. Defense Minister Saadoun al-Dulaimi is a Sunni Muslim, the country's minority sect that had been dominant under ousted leader Saddam Hussein, himself a Sunni. "Brothers we have to pull out by the roots the evil which is trying to destroy this country," al-Dulaimi said at a news conference after meeting with Jabr at the Interior Ministry. The agreement the two ministers signed on Sunday further requires them to share intelligence that could lead to any raid before reaching a joint decision to conduct the operation. "We are facing a very tough security situation that requires this kind of joint cooperation against the devils that want Iraqis to fight each other," Jabr said. U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad had said shortly before the Samarra bombing that the United States would not countenance Iraqi leaders beholden to a sectarian militia. Nearly three months after Dec. 15 parliamentary elections, the legislature still has been unable to meet to approve al-Jaafari's nomination as prime minister. A coalition of Kurdish politicians, including President Jalal Talabani, Sunnis and some sectarian lawmakers was formed recently in an attempt to block al-Jaafari from naming the country's first permanent post-invasion government. The United States has made that a precondition to its hopes to begin drawing down troops this summer. Parliament has now been ordered into a first session on March 19, but the date has already been called into question. The legislature has 60 days after its first meeting to elect a new president and approve the prime minister and his Cabinet.

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Iraq

Iraqi shrine crisis plays into Zarqawi's hands

2006-02-28

Iraqi leaders, from Kurdish President Jalal Talabani to Shia Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari and Sunni Defence Minister Saadoun al-Dulaimi, scramble to avert what they have no hesitation in describing as the danger of civil war IRAQI leaders are now saying exactly what their deadliest enemy, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, may want to hear - Iraq faces a real threat of civil war. The destruction of a Shia shrine on Wednesday plunged postwar Iraq into its deepest crisis, setting off a furious wave of sectarian violence that claimed more than 200 lives. Iraqi leaders, from Kurdish President Jalal Talabani to Shia Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari and Sunni Defence Minister Saadoun al-Dulaimi, scrambled to avert what they had no hesitation in describing as the danger of civil war. US and Iraqi officials suspect that Zarqawi, Al Qaeda’s leader in Iraq, ordered the Golden Mosque attack in Samarra to set off just such a conflict in the hope of giving militants a regional base for holy war and dashing US hopes for stability that would let American troops go home. The Jordanian Sunni militant’s group has in the past declared all-out war on “apostate” Shias and has claimed responsibility for suicide bombings that Iraqi and US officials say were designed to provoke Shia reprisals. Majority Shias had largely heeded calls for restraint by their clerical leaders in the past, but last week’s violence showed that some were spoiling for revenge on minority Sunnis. “Zarqawi and Al Qaeda have made big gains from this crisis,” said Hazim al-Naimi, a political science professor in Baghdad. “He wants Iraq out of control and this will help.” An Iraqi militant grouping that includes Al Qaeda blamed the Baghdad government and Shia Iran for the bombing of what it called the Shia idol in Samarra and said it was a scheme to impose Shia domination - highly inflammatory language. Analysts say Zarqawi wants anarchy in which he can maintain long-term operations in the country, not unlike Al Qaeda’s use of bases in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, with the overall aim of fostering religious rule throughout the region. “Zarqawi wants to do one thing and that is create chaos that will help him reach his goal,” said Joost Hiltermann, an Iraq expert at the International Crisis Group think-tank. Zarqawi may have rejoiced when the Golden Mosque blast set off retaliation by men wearing the black of Shia militiamen. Shia militia leaders disowned the reprisals but said they reflected the degree of anger in their community. Conversely, the violence has also reinforced efforts among many Iraqis to uphold a sense of unity. After 12 people were killed in their home near Baghdad on Saturday in what police called a sectarian attack on Shias, neighbours and relatives gathered to insist their mixed community would resist violence. But Iraqi leaders are not taking any chances. Defence Minister Saadoun al-Dulaimi, who warned of “endless civil war” if the violence spiralled, threatened to fill the streets with tanks to stop sectarian tensions that have been building for two-and-half bloody years from exploding. Fearful leaders: The Iraqi government only has a few tanks but they are backed by 130,000 US troops, now widely seen as critical to stopping civil war, even though both Sunni and Shia gunmen resent the US military presence. “Zarqawi and Osama bin Laden want destructive anarchy, instability and chaos - anything so that the American project fails in Iraq,” said Abdel-Bari Atwan, editor of London-based newspaper al-Quds al-Arabi and an expert on Al Qaeda. Iraqi and US leaders hope splits between Arab militants loyal to Zarqawi, Iraq’s most wanted man, and Iraqi insurgents will make it easier to stabilise the country. Both are Sunni Arabs hostile to US policy, but their aims contrast, with Al Qaeda militants fighting for radical Islamist rule in the Arab world and Iraqi nationalist rebels seeking to re-establish a Sunni-dominated government in Baghdad. Zarqawi has angered fellow Sunnis with suicide bombings in areas populated by the minority sect. And the attack on the shrine deepened Iraqi fighters’ suspicions of him. “The armed resistance is convinced that Zarqawi and others who have ties to the outside such as Iran and Israel are trying to hurt the Sunni Arabs and diminish their role in the Iraqi leadership,” said a militant known as Abdel Salaam of the nationalist insurgent group Mohammed’s Army in Falluja. “We will open fire on them if they attack the symbols of national leadership and we have warned them,” he said. Atwan said the mosque explosion might widen rifts between Al Qaeda-linked Sunni militants in Iraq and more moderate elements in the minority Sunni Arab community, but if a full-scale sectarian conflict erupted, these divisions would wither. Zarqawi, who has a $25 million US bounty on his head, is not expected to give up his holy war campaign, even if he has created deadly enemies of his own in Iraq. “He has angered insurgents who don’t believe in his methods or in attacks on holy sites,” ICG’s Hiltermann said. “But that won’t stop him.”

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Iraq

Representatives of Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish parties agreed to renew talks

2006-02-26

BAGHDAD, Iraq - In an unusual round of telephone diplomacy, President Bush spoke with seven leaders of Shiite, Sunni Arab and Kurdish political parties in a bid to defuse the sectarian crisis unleashed by the bombing of the Shiites' Askariya shrine in Samarra. Bush "encouraged them to continue to work together to thwart the efforts of the perpetrators of the violence to sow discord among Iraq's communities," said Frederick Jones, a spokesman for the White House's National Security Council. The U.S. president's personal intervention appeared to ease Sunni fears and give new impetus to political moves to resolve the crisis. During a late night meeting at Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari's residence, representatives of Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish parties agreed to renew efforts to form a national unity government. "I am very happy and very optimistic," al-Jaafari said. "Our people are very far from civil war and everyone asserted that the first enemy of Iraqis is terrorism and there isn't a Sunni who is against a Shiite or a Shiite who is against a Sunni." Sunni leaders did not explicitly say they would end their boycott of coalition talks, announced Thursday after a wave of Shiite reprisal attacks on Sunni mosques. But a Sunni leader, Tariq al-Hashimi, said all sides agreement that one of the solutions to the sectarian crisis "is to form the government as soon as possible." "(Friday) they were fighting each other," Kurdish politician Mahmoud Othman told The Associated Press. "Until noon (Saturday) there were no improvements but suddenly after Bush called them, they all went to the meeting. There is strong American pressure because they are very much concerned about Iraq." A second straight day of curfew in Baghdad and three surrounding provinces kept the city relatively calm, raising hopes the worst of the crisis was past. Authorities lifted the curfew in the areas outside Baghdad but decreed an all-day vehicle ban Sunday for the capital and its suburbs. "I think the danger of civil war as a result of this attack has diminished, although I do not believe we are completely out of danger yet," U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad told reporters Saturday night. Faced with one of the gravest threats of the turbulent U.S. presence in Iraq, American officials mounted a furious effort to get the political process back on track while Iraqi authorities defended their handling of the crisis. Defense Minister Saadoun al-Dulaimi, a Sunni Arab, told reporters the government had one army division and one Interior Ministry armored brigade ready to move in case of a new outbreak of violence around the capital. "All honorable Iraqis are asked today to do all they can to preserve Iraqi blood and avoid strife, which in case it breaks out will burn everyone," al-Dulaimi said. "We do not want to burden the public with our security measures but the more we take, the more we can control acts of violence. If we have to, we are ready to fill the streets with (armored) vehicles." Violence began to recede following calls for restraint from Islamic religious leaders, including radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, whose own militia was blamed for many of the attacks on Sunnis. On Saturday, al-Sadr's movement joined Sunni clerics in agreeing to prohibit killing members of the two sects and banning attacks on each other's mosques. The clerics issued a statement blaming "the occupiers," meaning the Americans and their coalition partners, for stirring up sectarian unrest. "We demand that the occupiers leave or set a timetable for the withdrawal," the statement said. al-Sadr is an idiot Bush is a hell of lot more intelligent than the liberals give him credit for.

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Iraq

Iraqi DM: Syrian border 'source of evil'

2005-12-03

Hat tip Confederate Yankee. The Iraqi defense minister described his country's border with Syria as a "source of evil." Defense Minister Saadoun al-Dulaimi warned Syria that his government's patience was running out. "My brothers, this is historic, national and legitimate mission. You are protecting this gate at the western border that used to be a source of evil to Iraq and a source for the entrance of vampires into Iraq," he said during a visit to the western border town of Husaybah. Dulaimi said: "We tell our neighbors, take care of your own affairs and don't interfere in Iraq's affairs ... Iraqis are heading for the future and they will not be stopped by a car bomb or a filthy body rigged with explosives," he said. "You should not be a gate of evil to us. I hope you will be a good gate. I also tell them don't let our patience run out," said Dulaimi. He added that "this evil alliance between Muslim extremists and Baathists in Iraqi will not succeed."

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Iraq

Iraq describes border with Syria as 'source of evil'

2005-12-01

The Iraqi defense minister described his country's border with Syria as a "source of evil," as U.S. President George W. Bush refused Wednesday to set a pullout timetable for Iraq and said his goal was "complete victory." Shortly ahead of Bush's speech, Defense Minister Saadoun al-Dulaimi warned Syria that his government's patience was running out. "My brothers, this is historic, national and legitimate mission. You are protecting this gate at the western border that used to be a source of evil to Iraq and a source for the entrance of vampires into Iraq," he said during a visit to the western border town of Husaybah. Dulaimi said: "We tell our neighbors, take care of your own affairs and don't interfere in Iraq's affairs ... Iraqis are heading for the future and they will not be stopped by a car bomb or a filthy body rigged with explosives. You should not be a gate of evil to us. I hope you will be a good gate. I also tell them don't let our patience run out." He added that "this evil alliance between Muslim extremists and Baathists in Iraqi will not succeed."

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Iraq

Iraqi defense minister sez Syria allowing hard boyz to train

2005-11-13

Iraq's defense minister slammed Damascus on Sunday for letting militants train on Syrian soil and warned that an escalation of violence in Iraq will spill over into neighboring countries. Saadoun al-Dulaimi's visit to Jordan follows Wednesday's triple hotel suicide bombings in the Jordanian capital Amman by the al-Qaida in Iraq terror group, which killed 57 people. "We have more than 450 detainees who came from different Arab and Muslim countries to train in Syria and enter with their booby-trapped vehicles into Iraq to bring destruction and killings," al-Dulaimi said after meeting Jordanian Prime Minister Adnan Badran. "Let me tell the Syrians that if the Iraqi volcano explodes, no neighboring capital will be saved," al-Dulaimi told The Associated Press. The Iraqi minister demanded more anti-terror support from Damascus, which is already facing intense pressure from the United States to lock down its borders and stop extremists allied with Jordanian-born militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of al-Qaida in Iraq, from entering the country. "Iraq is bordering several countries, Iran, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Jordan, but why is it only the Syrian borders that I have complained more than once about?" al-Dulaimi said. "We have a 620-kilometer border with this country and we have 620 problems with the Syrians," he said. "It seems our brothers in Syria won't like what we say in this critical period for the Syrians." A United Nations investigation team recently accused top Syrian intelligence officials of involvement in the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri. Earlier this month, the U.N. Security Council passed a unanimous resolution demanding Syria cooperate fully in the ongoing U.N. investigation into Hariri's killing. Iraqi and U.S. forces have been trying to crush Iraq's rampant insurgency for the past two years. But despite multiple U.S.-Iraqi operations targeting suspected militant bases, militants led by al-Zarqawi and Saddam Hussein loyalists continue to attack across the country. Al-Qaida in Iraq's operation in Jordan - its deadliest inside a neighboring Mideast country - has also raised fears that al-Zarqawi's terror campaign has gained enough momentum to spread throughout the region. Jordan's King Abdullah has said that the suicide bombers who targeted the Radisson SAS, Grand Hyatt and Days Inn hotels were likely to have been Iraqi and entered Jordan from either Syria or Iraq. Al-Dulaimi also offered Iraq's condolences and support to Jordan to try and find those responsible for the hotel attacks, this kingdom's deadliest ever. "We are partners in facing terrorism," he said. "Amman's ordeal and Jordan's ordeal is the ordeal of all Iraqis," he said. The terrorists' aim "is to kill tolerance and destroy coexistence in Arab and Muslim cities."

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Iraq-Jordan

Iraqi, U.S. Troops Sweep Into Tal Afar

2005-09-10

U.S. and Iraqi troops swept into the insurgent stronghold of Tal Afar early Saturday, conducting house-to-house searches and battering down walls with armored vehicles in a second bid to clean the city of militant fighters. Some 30 miles south of Baghdad, meanwhile, police found the bodies of 18 men who had been handcuffed and shot to death in Iskandariya, a town where dozens of killings have been reported in escalating vengeance killings by Shiite Muslim and Sunni Aram "death squads." "Two days ago gunmen in police uniforms broke into their houses in a Shiite neighborhood of Iskandariya," police Capt. Adel Kitab said of the latest victims. In the capital, Baghdad International Airport reopened early Saturday after a day's closure in a payment dispute between the government and a British security company. Global Strategies Group said it agreed to resume security work after the government promised to pay half of what the company said it is owed. Iraq police said two mortar shells were fired into the Green Zone that houses the U.S. Embassy, the Iraqi parliament and government offices. There was no word on casualties or damage. In the Tal Afar offensive, which had been expected for weeks, coalition forces faced several hundred lightly armed insurgents in the largely deserted city, 260 miles northwest of Baghdad and about 60 miles east of the Syrian border. There was heavy gunfire in the Sarai district, the oldest part of the city and the major insurgent stronghold. "I can see why the terrorists chose this place for a fight, it's like a big funnel of death," Sgt. William Haslett of Rocklin, Calif., said of the twisting streets and alleys in the old city. Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari announced the 2 a.m. start of the offensive in a statement issued early Saturday. At a news conference later, he said the insurgents had been trying "to isolate Tal Afar from the political process as we are preparing for the referendum on the draft constitution." Tal Afar residents were largely Turkomen, with ethnic and cultural ties to Turkey to the north. They are mostly Sunni Muslims but had been governed since the ouster of Saddam Hussein by a U.S.-backed Shiite Muslim city government and police force. Interior Minister Bayan Jabr said 48 insurgents had been captured so far, along with mortars and communications gear. He said Iraqi troops had suffered two wounded and no deaths. Defense Minister Saadoun al-Dulaimi said that in the past two days, 141 "terrorists" had been killed and 197 wounded. Five government soldiers died and three were injured, he said. Al-Dulaimi said 11 Iraqi army battalions and three battalions of paramilitary police were engaged in the offensive, along with three battalions of U.S. troops, and promised Iraqi forces would broaden the offensive against insurgents north and west of Baghdad, right up to the Syrian border. "We say to our people in (the insurgent strongholds of) Qaim, Rawa, Samarra and Ramadi, we are coming and terrorists and criminals will not be able to hide there," he said. He complained that neighboring nations had not done enough to stop the flow of foreign fighters. "I regret to say that instead of sending medicines to us, our Arab brothers are sending terrorists," al-Dulaimi said. U.S. forces cleared Tal Afar of militants last year but quickly withdrew, leaving behind a force of only 500 that was unable to block the militants' return. In a bid to soften resistance, the U.S. military carried out repeated air and artillery strikes on targets in the city, where most of the population of 200,000 was reported to have fled to the surrounding countryside. On Friday, the government issued a statement hinting a major attack was imminent, and the U.S. military reported killing 11 insurgents during raids over the past two days. The Iraqi military claimed it had arrested 150 foreign fighters who had infiltrated from Syria.

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Iraq-Jordan

IRAN to train IRAQ's military

2005-07-07

sigh Mr Dulaimi is on his first official visit to the Islamic Republic Former enemies Iran and Iraq say they will launch broad military co-operation including training Iraqi armed forces. "It's a new chapter in our relations with Iraq," said Iranian Defence Minister Admiral Ali Shamkhani. He was speaking at a joint news conference in Tehran with his Iraqi counterpart Saadoun al-Dulaimi. Relations between the neighbours - who fought a bitter war from 1980 to 1988 - have improved greatly since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in 2003. This is the first visit to Iran by an Iraqi military delegation since the war, in which a million people died, started. The promise of co-operation comes despite repeated accusations by the US - which has about 140,000 troops in Iraq - that Iran has been undermining security there. "No one can prevent us from reaching an agreement," Mr Shamkhani said when asked about possible US opposition. Mr Dulaimi echoed his Iranian counterpart's view about a new era of Iranian-Iraqi ties. "I have come to Iran to ask forgiveness for what Saddam Hussein has done. The same has to be done with Kuwait and all Saddam Hussein's victims," he told the news conference. Tehran has asked Baghdad not to allow the US to establish long-term military bases on its soil, fearing that it would consolidate what Iranians see as the American and Israeli military domination of the region. But Mr Dulaimi insisted that foreign troops were needed to ensure Iraqi security. He added: "Iraq will not be a source of insecurity and instability for any of its neighbours. Nobody can use [Iraqi territory] to attack its neighbours." Among other areas of co-operation, Mr Shamkhani listed mine clearance, anti-terrorism, identifying those still missing from the Iran-Iraq war and training and re-equipping the Iraqi army. The two ministers said more sensitive issues such as a full peace treaty and war reparations were still a long way from being resolved. "We have come to our Iranian brothers to ask them for help and we have not yet started on the more sensitive issues," Mr Dulaimi said. In May Iran's foreign minister promised to tighten security on the two countries' border on his first visit to Baghdad. An Iraqi government delegation headed by Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari is expected to visit Tehran next week.

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