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Ahmadinejad to visit Iraq for talks
July 13, 2013, 11:25 pm

Ahmadinejad will discuss trade and security with Iraqi officials [Xinhua]

Ahmadinejad will discuss trade and security with Iraqi officials [Xinhua]

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will visit Baghdad on July 18 to hold talks about mutual cooperation with his Iraqi counterparts, Iranian media reported Saturday.

Ahmadinejad will meet with high-ranking Iraqi officials, including Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki and Vice President Khodair al-Khozaei, the reports said.

The talks are likely to centre around bilateral trade and security issues, the situation in Syria, and the status of MKO, an Iranian opposition group in Iraq, formerly protected by Saddam Hussein, the ousted president.

Iran and Iraq fought a bloody war between September 1980 and August 1988. The fall of Hussein’s regime in 2003 precipitated in the normalization of relations between the two countries. Since then, the two countries have signed dozens of economic, religious, security and cooperation agreements.

The talks will likely also include Iraq’s security status, which has deteriorated in the past three months. Violence has killed more than 3,000 people since the end of April.

On Saturday, a bomb outside a Sunni mosque in Baghdad killed at least 13 people and wounded a further 40 as they were leaving Ramadan evening prayers.

Source: Agencies