Sep 4, 2007, 02:47 am
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| Devil's Advocate
Location: Alberta Posts: 136 | Iraqi Foreign Minister Demands That Iran Stop Shelling of Kurdish Area in North http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/04/wo...in&oref=slogin Quote:
TEHRAN, Sept. 3 — Iraq’s foreign minister, Hoshyar Zebari, delivered a strongly worded demand to Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and other Iranian officials here on Monday to halt the shelling of a mountainous border region in Iraq’s north, where Mr. Zebari said the bombardment has driven as many as 3,000 Kurdish villagers from their homes and set orchards and fields ablaze.
Smoke rose from the site of an attack last month 200 miles north of Baghdad. Villagers said Iran had shelled the area.
Mr. Zebari said in an interview that the Iranians, who have refused to acknowledge publicly that the shelling was taking place, did not dispute his account.
He said the Iranian foreign minister, Manouchehr Mottaki, described the shelling as Iran’s response to guerrilla attacks against it by a group that is opposed to the Iranian government and is believed to have bases on the Iraqi side of the border.
Members of that group, Pezak, have claimed responsibility for attacks inside Iran, and they are believed to have shot down at least one Iranian helicopter in recent months. But Mr. Zebari said the shelling of the villages was indiscriminate and was achieving little against Pezak positions, and he made clear that Iraqi patience was wearing thin with the bombardment, which has taken place intermittently for about two weeks.
| So will this lead to even worse relations between Iran and the US or is this nothing to be concerned about?
Jern_Sandyer is the local Devil's Advocate Number 1
I doubt my sanity; yet again I doubt yours as well |
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