Iranian FM arrives in Iraq for landmark visit
(Agencies)
Updated: 2005-05-17 18:24

BAGHDAD - Iran's Foreign Minister Kamal Kharazi arrived in Baghdad for a landmark visit and talks with the new leadership of Iraq, against which Tehran fought an eight-year war, an official said.

"Mr Kharazi arrived in Baghdad," Laith Kubba, Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari's spokesman, told AFP.

Kharazi -- the highest-ranking Iranian official to visit Iraq since the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime two years ago -- was due to meet Jaafari, President Jalal Talabani and Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari during the one-day visit.

"We have a range of issues on both sides, including non-interference, cooperation, the economy and closing the files of the Iraq-Iran war," Zebari said Monday.

Kharazi's visit, just two days after that of US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, highlights the warming of ties between the two neighbours and their attempt to normalise relations.

Relations between Shiite majority Iran and the interim government set up by the United States in June 2004, just over a year after a US-led invasion ousted Saddam Hussein, were uneven.

But the new Shiite-dominated government, many of whose ministers spent many years in exile in Tehran and have close ties with Iran, an arch-foe of Washinton, has helped ease relations.

Baghdad and Tehran re-established diplomatic ties last September, although many issues are still unresolved from their devastating 1980-1988 war which left hundreds of thousands of dead.

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