Iran gives al-Maliki's government an aircraft as a gift

The Associated Press /Saturday, July 21, 2007 / Listen to Article

BAGHDAD: A jetliner donated to the Iraqi government by Iran landed at Baghdad airport on Saturday, four months after it was first promised by Tehran, according to government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh. He attributed the delay to unspecified technical reasons. "The Iraqi government would like to thank the Islamic government of Iran for this present, which we hope will contribute to the development of relations and common interests between the two nations," al-Dabbagh told The Associated Press. A government official said the plane, which local television reports said was an Airbus 300, would be set aside for the use of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and other top officials in his government. The gift underlines the warmth of ties between the al-Maliki government and Tehran since the 2003 ouster of Saddam Hussein, who fought a ruinous, eight-year war against Iran in the 1980s. The United States maintains that Iran is arming and training Iraqi insurgents killing its troops in Iraq. Shiite Iran denies the charge and says it, like Washington, has a vested interest in seeing stability return to Iraq, where majority Shiites emerged from decades of oppression to become the most dominant political force after the fall of Saddam's regime.