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Iraq goes courting in
Iran
By Safa Haeri
PARIS - Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim
Jaafari has taken the first important steps in the
sensitive process of normalizing relations with
former foe and rival Iran. His three-day official
visit to Tehran, which ended on Monday, was "very
important and significant", say senior Iranian
analysts.
Jaafari arrived in Tehran on
Saturday, soon after his defense minister visited,
taking with him a large political and economic
delegation primed to rebuild ties between the two
Shi'ite-dominated countries, which fought an
eight-year war in the 1980s.
The visit
comes three weeks after the surprise victory of
Mahmud Ahmadinejad in Iran's presidential
elections and less than a month before the new
leader takes over from President Mohammad Khatami.
"The timing of this visit, delayed twice because
of the Iranian presidential elections, is very
important. It has certainly been approved and even
encouraged by Washington," observed Alireza
Nourizadeh, a veteran Iranian journalist based in
London, speaking to Radio Farda (Tomorrow) the
Persian service of Radio Free Europe-Radio
Liberty.
Jaafari was the first foreign
high-ranking personality to meet the incoming
Iranian president, described as a "fundamentalist"
close to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the leader of the
Islamic republic, and the Americans will expect
that Jaafari will be able to brief them on any
hints that might have been dropped on Iran's
policies regarding the US, Iraq and the Middle
East peace process.
A former Revolutionary
Guards officer, Ahmadinejad fought against the
Iraqis during the war.
Iraqi Defense
Minister Saadun al-Dulaimi, in sharp contrast to
his predecessor, who had tagged Iran "Iraq's
number one enemy" and accused the ruling Iranian
ayatollahs of "killing democracy [in Iraq] by
supporting terrorists", said in Tehran, "I have
come to Iran to ask forgiveness for what Saddam
Hussein has done to Iranians. I have come to close
a painful page and start a new one," referring to
the war that killed more than a million people and
cost billions of dollars in devastation.
Dulaimi signed several security and
anti-terrorist agreements with his Iranian
counterpart, Ali Shamkhani, who promised to help
Iraq fight its insurgency and offered defense and
military cooperation, as well as forming and
training Iraqi police and armed forces, a project
denied later by Iraqi Interior Minister Bayan
Jaber.
If sincere, Tehran could help both
Iraqi and US-led forces to better fight the
largely Sunni-based insurgency in Iraq by engaging
the 15,000 to 20,000 al-Badr Brigade, the military
wing of the Shi'ite Supreme Assembly of Islamic
Revolution of Iraq, formed, trained and equipped
by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards to oppose
Saddam.
On the thorny issue of the
presence in Iraq of some 3,000 members of the
outlawed Mujahideen-e-Khalq (MKO) , an Iranian
exile group, Dulaimi said they could stay in Iraq
as political refugees, adding clearly that no
anti-Iranian actions on their part would be
tolerated.
For more than 20 years, Iran
provided shelter to millions of Iraqi Shi'ites and
Kurds oppressed by Saddam, while the Iraqi
dictator used the MKO, which he largely financed
and equipped, to fight Iran, as well as Kuwait,
which he occupied briefly in 1990 before being
booted out by an international force led by the
US.
Indeed, the visiting Iraqi premier
lived in Iran for 10 years after Saddam banned all
Shi'ite parties, including the Da'wa Party, to
which Jaafari belonged.
"There are some
important facts that bind Iran and Iraq. Iran gave
safe haven to thousands of Iraqis during Saddam's
bloody purges in southern and northern Iraq. Many
Iraqis still live in Iran. The cultural and
religious affinities between the two nations are
very significant and can never be underestimated,"
the English-language Tehran Times, close to the
Foreign Affairs Ministry, commented.
The
countries resumed diplomatic relations in
September last year, with Iran being one of the
first nations to officially recognize the
American-installed Iraqi interim government of
Iyad Allawi.
Iranian Foreign Affairs
Minister Kamal Kharazi earlier visited Baghdad in
an effort to bury the hatchet, without achieving
concrete results on most pending issues, such as
the exchange of prisoners of war, and especially
war damages claimed by Tehran, estimated at
billions of dollars, and the signing of a formal
peace treaty replacing the present ceasefire
decided by the United Nations Security Council in
1989.
However, Iranian observers do not
expect too much movement on these issues as
Jaafari would rather wait for Ahmadinejad to
officially take over.
In the past, Baghdad
never responded to Iran's claims for war damages,
and in return Tehran has never admitted that
Saddam sent more than 200 civilian and military
planes to Iran, including Boeing airliners, MiG
fighters and Sukhoi bombers, as well as some
French Mirages, to escape US-led attacks in 1991.
Khatami expressed the hope that Jaafari's
visit would become a "landmark" in Tehran-Baghdad
relations, "allowing repair and compensation for
the great damages and pain Saddam Hussein
inflicted to Iranians", a veiled reference to
Tehran's claims for war damages.
Rejecting
this politely and diplomatically, Jaafari said he
"fully understands" the injuries and damages the
former Iraqi dictator caused to people of the
region, but, he added, "Saddam was not the
representative of the Iraqi nation and people."
Jaafari's visit coincided with a spate of
attacks in Iraq, including the explosion on Sunday
of a gas tanker by a suicide driver near a Shi'ite
mosque in the city of Musayyib, 60 kilometers
south of Baghdad. The explosion, in which at least
100 people died, increases fears of a religious
war in ethnically and religiously divided Iraq.
The worsening security situation was
expected to be a topic at the second meeting of
interior ministers from Iraq's neighbors, plus
Egypt, scheduled for Monday in Istanbul, Turkey.
Iran and Iraq on Sunday signed a
memorandum of understanding, meant to open a $1
billion credit line that could boost the flow of
Iran's exports to its neighbor, the Iranian
Commerce Ministry said. "The credit will be used
for the export of technical and engineering
services, as well as other goods to Iraq," a
ministry spokesman said.
Safa
Haeri is a Paris-based Iranian journalist
covering the Middle East and Central Asia.
(Copyright 2005 Asia Times Online Ltd.
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