BAGHDAD: Iraq and Iran will hold talks next week to formally mark their borders, Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said on Thursday.
Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshiyar Zebari met his Iranian counterpart on Thursday in a move to cool tensions between the neighbors after a small contingent of Iranian troops moved into an oil field inside Iraqi territory last month and Iraq vowed it would not give up an inch of its land. Their comments at a news conference after the meeting made clear the essence of the dispute had not been resolved. Mottaki said Iranian troops had been told to withdraw “to their original locations,” but Zebari indicated they had not moved far enough.
“The Iranian troops brought down the Iranian flag and withdrew (only) to a certain distance,” Zebari said. He said the two sides had agreed to “normalize border conditions and put back things as they were.”
“We had a problem (over borders), and still the problem is pending and we want to resolve it,” Zebari said.
Asked if the United Nations could be asked to mediate the dispute, Zebari said: “There will be no need ... because we have bilateral solutions...”
The seizure of the well, which Iraq claims as part of its Fakka oil field in southeastern Maysan province, triggered protests from Baghdad and jitters on world oil markets. A border dispute led to the eight-year Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s. Mottaki said the two countries were carrying out technical discussions on the dispute. The two sides said the talks would continue in the coming weeks.
