Iran says reconciliation talks with Iraq 'positive'

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BAGHDAD, Iraq (Reuters) -- Iran said on Sunday it had held "positive" talks with neighboring Iraq to patch up the differences remaining from their 1980-88 war.

"We have reached positive results to solve all pending issues," Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharazzi told reporters on Sunday at the end of a two-day visit to Iraq.

Kharazzi said the two powers had decided to resurrect a 1975 border and security pact that has been in limbo since Iraq invaded Iran in 1980 at the start of an eight-year-long war, which killed about 1 million people.

"We have decided to activate the 1975 agreement in order to set up balanced and good-neighborly relations," he said.

In the 1975 pact, Iraq ceded sovereignty over part of the Shatt al-Arab waterway in exchange for an end to Iranian support for Kurdish rebellion. It was signed by Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, when he was Iraq's vice-chairman of the Revolutionary Command Council, and the late Shah of Iran.

The agreement also provides for non-interference in each other's internal affairs, halts actions undermining each other's security, and provides for political and cultural exchanges.

Kharazzi said the two neighbors agreed to accelerate the exchange of prisoners of war and the remains of bodies of soldiers killed during the war.

The fate of thousands of prisoners of war is among the thorniest issues hindering ties between the two countries. Iraq says Iran still holds several thousand war prisoners. Tehran says it has freed all of them. Tehran accuses Iraq of still holding about 3,000 Iranian POWs, but Iraq says it holds none.

Kharazzi said both sides agreed to reactivate five joint committees set up under a 1997 accord to resolve differences including those over border demarcation, prisoners of war, as well as trade and security issues.

"With these committees we will solve all pending issues and then close the humanitarian file that was created by eight years of war," he said.

He said they also reached an agreement on the resumption of Iranian visits to holy Shi'ite Muslim shrines in Iraq. He said the visits -- stopped in July over financial differences -- would resume soon.

But Kharazzi made no mention of the armed opposition groups that carry out cross-border raids and which each side accuses the other of harboring.

Kharazzi left Baghdad aboard an Iranian plane, the first to land in Baghdad since the 1991 Gulf War, the Iraqi News Agency INA said.

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