FM says Iraq cannot stop Iran arms flights to Syria

Agencies/Riyadh

“We reject and condemn the transfer of weapons through our airspace and we will inform the Iranian side of that formally. But we do not have the ability to stop it,” he told pan-Arab daily Asharq al-Awsat.

Iran is the main ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who is fighting mostly Sunni rebels in a civil war in which the opposition say more than 100,000 people have been killed.

The US, which wants Assad to relinquish power, has warned Iraq not to allow Iranian weapons flights to cross its airspace into Syria. But Zebari said he had told Western countries that if they wanted to stop such flights, they had to help do so themselves.

“If you imagine these flights breach UN Security Council resolutions banning weapons imports and exports from Iran... I invite you in the name of the government to help us stop these flights across Iraqi airspace,” he said.

“Last September we started to inspect Iranian and Syrian planes at random. We have found non-lethal materials, like equipment, medicin e and food,” Zebari said.

“In all honesty, those planes might be carrying other stuff, but we have neither the deterrent means, nor the air defences and fighter jets to prevent... arms shipments,” he told Asharq al-Awsat.

Iraq is dominated by Shia Muslim parties with close ties to Tehran, but Zebari said his country was committed to neutrality in Syria.

Zebari said Iraq does not provide any weapons or money to Syria and, despite requests from Damascus, does not sell it crude oil at preferential rates.

Zebari, himself a Sunni Kurd, said last month that he could not deny that Iraqi Shias were fighting in Syria alongside the forces of Assad, whose Alawite sect is an offshoot of Shia Islam.

But he stressed that their involvement in the conflict “does not come under government policy”.

Two years of fighting in Syria risks further destabilising an already fragile Iraq as Shia and Sunni fighters cross the long border between the two states.

Clashes yesterday between Iraqi border police and gunmen who crossed from Syria into western Iraq killed a policeman and wounded five, an officer said.

The gunmen travelling in five four-wheel-drive vehicles crossed into Iraq’s Anbar province about 10km from the Al-Waleed border crossing with Syria, Major Shihab Taha of the border police said.

Clashes broke out between the gunmen and the border police inside Iraq, killing one policeman and wounding five, Taha said, putting the number of gunmen killed at two.