Baghdad seeks Tehran missiles

The recent visit of Faezeh Rafsanjani, the daughter of former Iranian president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, to Iraq has added fuel to rumours of growing cooperation between the two countries.

This was followed by reports of a secret visit by Qussay, the youngest son of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, to Iran recently.

Addressing a press conference here yesterday, Hamid Reza Asefi, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman, said Faezeh's visit to Iraq "has taken place within the framework of bilateral sports cooperation between the two neighbouring countries."

Faezeh is the head of Women's Sports Federation of the Islamic Countries and former member of the Iranian Parliament.

Asefi also refuted the reports of Qussay's visit to Tehran as 'baseless'. It was alleged that Qussay in a meeting with the high-ranking Iranian officers 10 days ago, urged Iran to give back all planes Iraq had sent to Iran, in order to save them from destruction by the attacking Americans during the Gulf War.

The allegation was immediately rejected by Iran's foreign ministry while Islamic Iran Participation Front's ( IIPF) web site said the meeting took place under tight security.

Since the IIPF, Iran's dominant political party holding a key position in the parliament and the government, its confirmation highlights the possibility of such a meeting in Tehran or a border city in the north western province of Kerman-shahan.

The IIPF web site said that Qussay met with Major General Baqer Zolqadr, a Deputy Commander in Chief of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards in a border town of the Iranian territory.

In the meeting, Qussay, who is the commander of his father's special guards and also the member of the military secret services, presented his Iranian host with three demands that included the returning of all military planes, the sale of an unspecified numbers of the Iranian-made 'Shahab-III' surface-to-air missiles and also providing Baghdad with foodstuff and medicines.

As the allied forces, led by the Americans, started bombing of Iraq in 1991, Saddam ordered most of his military planes to fly to a safe place in the neighbouring Iran.

These included the Soviet-made MIGs and French-made Mirages as well as more than 20 Boeing jets. He had an agreement with the Iranian government earlier.

To repeated Iraqi demands for the return of the planes, Tehran has always said that of the two dozen planes which entered the Iranian air space, most crashlanded, due to technical problems.

According to the web site, Zolqadr told Qussay he is not in a position to answer his requests for the purchase of missiles, but he assured him that none of the planes Iraq sent to Iran was worth flying, since all of them were badly damaged and out of use.

While the Iranian official categorically denied that Qussay came secretly to Iran, his elder brother Udday warned Tehran against any cooperation with Washington and its plans to attack Iraq.

At the same time the state-run Baghdad Television aired the 'confessions' of the two Iraqis involved in espionage for the Islamic Republic of Iran.

However, the Iranian and the Arab sources have noticed that after the American characterisation of both Iran and Iraq as part of 'an axis of evil' along with North Korea, efforts have been on mostly on the Iranian side, for the formation of an anti-American front.

The front would also include Syria and Palestine.