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Iran border closure costs Iraqi Kurdistan
million dollars a day
26.9.2007
By Rebwar Fatah
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September
26, 2007
Sulaimaniyah, Kurdistan region 'Iraq', --
- Iran’s closure of its frontier with Iraq is
costing the autonomous Kurdistan region one million
dollars a day, a government minister said on
Wednesday, as trucks remained stuck at the border.
“There are goods costing millions waiting across the
border,” Kurdistan trade minister Mohammed Raouf
told AFP, referring to the Haj Umran frontier post
near Erbil, the capital of Kurdistan 'northern
Iraq'.
Efforts were now under way to redirect the trucks,
many carrying frozen goods such as chicken, meat and
eggs, through neighbouring Turkey into Iraq, he
said.
“The Kurdistan region is losing one million dollars
per day because of the closure.”
Iran said on Monday it was closing its frontier with
Iraq in protest at the detention last week of
Iranian national Mahmudi Farhadi by US troops.
The US military charges that Farhadi is an officer
in the covert operations arm of Iran’s elite
Revolutionary Guards, accused by American commanders
of helping Shiite militias involved in Iraq’s bloody
sectarian conflict.
Iran has made clear that it regards Iraqi
sovereignty as at stake in Farhadi’s continued
custody, after both the regional and national
authorities of Iraq said he had been visiting with
their consent.
Angry Kurdish merchants in Erbil said they were
being forced to search for other sources of
foodstuffs and electronic goods, the main items
imported from Iran, possibly in Turkey or Syria.
Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, himself a Kurd, on
Tuesday declared the arrest of the Iranian “illegal”
and again demanded his release.
“We have asked the US authorities to release the
arrested man,” Talabani told reporters in the
northern Kurdish city of Sulaimaniyah.
“Arresting a person in Kurdistan is illegal because
his security file was under the jurisdiction of the
provincial government,” said Talabani.
AFP
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