Financial Times - July 19, 2005
Iraqi delegation cements ties with Iran By Gareth Smyth in Tehran
A high-level Iraqi delegation led by Ibrahim al-Jaafari, prime minister, headed home yesterday from Iran after opening what both sides see as a new era in their relations.
Leading 10 ministers, Mr Jaafari used a three-day visit to cement ties - in spite of Washington's stepped-up hostility to Iran after Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad, an Islamic fundamentalist, was elected president last month.
Mr Jaafari on Saturday laid a wreath at the tomb of Ayatollah Khomeini, leader of Iran's 1979 Islamic revolution, and yesterday made a pilgrimage to Mashad, shrine of Imam Reza, the Shia Muslim leader who died in the 9th century.
But if the visit emphasised the Shia Islamic faith shared by at least 55 per cent of Iraqis - including Mr Jaafari - and about 85 per cent of Iranians, its stress was on more worldly matters.
Mr Jaafari said the two countries had formed five joint committees covering politics, reconstruction, the economy, trade and security.
Officials discussed Iranian assistance in easing the bottleneck of Iraq's oil exports and in helping it import badly-needed refined fuel.
Bijan Namdar Zanganeh, Iran's oil minister, said Iran would build a 40km oil pipeline from Basra, in southern Iraq, to allow Iraqi oil exports through Iran's Abadan port on the Gulf, and two other pipelines from Abadan and Mahshahr, a second Iranian port, for importing refined fuel into Iraq.
Officials said they expected a memorandum to be signed within days and for the exchange to begin within 10 months.
There were also talks about air links, and of linking the two countries' electricity grids at border points near Basra and Khanaqin.
Relations between the two neighbours have vastly improved since Mr Jaafari took office in April at the head of an elected government. Mr Jaafari, a leader of the radical Shia al-Da'wa party, spent nine years in exile in the Iranian holy city of Qom after Saddam Hussein launched the 1980-88 war with Iran.
With a 1,000km border, the two countries are natural trading partners - hence Iraq recently awarded Iran a tender to supply 250,000 tonnes of flour.
But a further reason for increasing co-operation is Tehran's concern at growing regional activity of militant Sunni Islamist groups linked to al-Qaeda.
In the latest attack in Iraq on Shia civilians, an explosion on Sunday outside a mosque in Musayyib killed 98 people. Groups linked to al-Qaeda have also issued death threats against the Badr group, a Shia party formerly based in Iran.
On Saturday Ali Younesi, Iran's information minister, said security forces had broken up an al-Qaeda cell in eastern Iran.