Jordan to send humanitarian flight to Baghdad

AMMAN, Jordan (Reuters) -- A Jordanian plane carrying ministers and humanitarian aid will fly to Baghdad in the next 24 hours in the first Arab flight to Iraq in 10 years, a government minister said on Tuesday.

The minister, who requested anonymity, said Jordan had notified a U.N. sanctions committee of the flight and said it was a purely humanitarian mission.

"In the coming 24 hours, a Jordanian plane carrying humanitarian aid will fly to Baghdad," the minister told Reuters.

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He was commenting on a report by Jordan's leading newspaper Al-Rai which said that a Jordanian plane would fly politicians, public figures and aid to Baghdad on Wednesday.

The minister said the official delegation would be led by Health Minister Tareq Suhaimat and include ministers of social development, culture and trade.

Al-Rai, majority-owned by the government, quoted Foreign Minister Abdulilah al-Khatib as confirming its report.

"Yes, preparations for this have been going on for the past two days and arrangements are being made," Khatib was quoted as saying.

The daily said the flight was in line with King Abdullah's call for an end to U.N. sanctions imposed on Iraq after it invaded Kuwait in 1990.

Security Council debate

Two Russian planes and one French aircraft have landed at Baghdad airport in recent weeks in defiance of a 10-year-old ban on flights.

The flights have sparked debate among U.N. Security Council members, with France insisting planes be allowed to fly to Iraq with a simple notification to a U.N. committee while the United States and Britain say permission is needed.

The three-month-old Jordanian government of Prime Minister Ali Abu al-Ragheb recently put out feelers to Baghdad, hinting that it sought better ties after a number of misunderstandings over the last few years.

Abu al-Ragheb is widely expected to go to Baghdad in coming weeks to become the highest-ranking Arab official to visit Iraq.

Iraq was Jordan's biggest trading partner before the U.N. sanctions.

Despite the sanctions, Baghdad remains Jordan's main energy supplier as it delivers annually over $600 million worth of crude and products under undisclosed concessionary terms that ease the burden on the kingdom's deficit-ridden budget.

Jordan, sympathetic to Iraq in the 1990-91 Gulf crisis over Kuwait, turned against Baghdad in 1995 and gave refuge to senior Iraqi defectors. The late King Hussein then called for a change of the regime in Baghdad.

But in recent years Jordan has been an advocate of lifting U.N. sanctions, which it says hurt only the Iraqi people.

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