Jordan wants to resume civil flights to Baghdad

BAGHDAD (Reuters) -- Jordan has asked the United Nations to give the green light to the resumption of direct flights between Amman and Baghdad, a top Jordanian official said Wednesday.

"We have asked for the U.N. permission to resume civil flights to Iraq and we are expecting a reply on this regard next month," Jordanian Transport Minister Mohammad Kalaldah told the official Iraqi News Agency INA.

Iraq says there are no U.N. Security Council resolutions that prevent civilian planes from flying into and out of the country.

MESSAGE BOARD Situation in Iraq

But the U.N. sanctions committee on Iraq maintains that civilian flights are an economic resource whose reinstatement would be a breach of the sanctions regime.

INA said Kalaldah and his Iraqi counterpart, Ahmed Murtada Ahmed, met Wednesday to discuss the resumption of flights between the Jordanian capital, Amman, and Baghdad.

Iraq re-opened Baghdad's international airport on Aug. 17 after 10 years of enforced closure. Civilian air traffic at the airport stopped when sanctions were imposed on Iraq days after President Saddam Hussein sent his forces into Kuwait in August 1990.

A Jordanian court last week sentenced an Italian pilot to three years in jail for flying a plane to Baghdad in defiance of a 10-year-old U.N. ban on flights to Iraq.

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