Iraq and Iran to meet to draw border

Space War ^ | 01/07/2010 | Staff Writers via Space War

[ErnstStavroBlofeld]

Iraq and Iran will begin talks next week to mark their borders, both countries said on Thursday, weeks after Tehran took over a disputed oil well in a move Iraq's prime minister called "unjustified." Nuri al-Maliki's criticism of the Iranian move came during talks between him and Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki, during the latter's one-day visit to Baghdad.

"There will be a meeting within a week between the two countries about the borders," Mottaki said at a joint press conference with his Iraqi counterpart Hoshyar Zebari at the foreign ministry in central Baghdad.

He added that in the following weeks, meetings would be held between technical committees from the two countries to determine the land and maritime borders separating the neighbours.

Mottaki's visit follows a spat between Baghdad and Tehran over Iranian forces' takeover of an oil well along the contested 1,458-kilometre (910-mile) frontier.

On December 18, Iraq's state-owned South Oil Co said that about a dozen Iranian troops and technicians had arrived at the field, taken control of Well 4 and raised the Iranian flag. They withdrew days later.

Mottaki's conciliatory remarks -- he described the border as one of "friendship and love and peace" -- contrasted sharply with Maliki's comments that Iraq was "astonished by the unjustified step."

[Melchior]

This will be an interesting negotiation. Maps of the two countries show different land boundaries in more than a half-dozen places. Saddam Hussein used the boundary issue as a rationale to wage war against Iran after the Ayatollah Khomeini took power.

[hennie pennie]

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