Fourth Turkish aid plane lands in Baghdad, Iraq says

BAGHDAD, Iraq (Reuters) -- A Turkish airliner carrying a trade and medical delegation landed in Baghdad on Sunday, the fourth Turkish flight in a week despite U.N. sanctions on Iraq, the official Iraqi News Agency INA reported.

The Turkish plane follows several other flights sent by Arab and other nations to Baghdad to challenge the 10-year-old U.N. sanctions imposed on Iraq for its 1990 invasion of Kuwait.

The agency said the Turkish delegation would hold "talks with Iraqi officials to expand trade exchange between Iraq and Turkey."

Bilateral trade with Iraq, Turkey's fourth largest trade partner before the Gulf War, has dropped sharply from some $2.5 billion annually in the early 1990s. It is governed by an oil-for-food deal that allows Baghdad to buy food and medicine.

The flights to Iraq, although largely symbolic, have sought to lessen Baghdad's isolation by exploiting a loophole in a 1990 U.N. Security Council resolution dealing with sanctions.

The United States and Britain are the powers on the U.N. Security Council responsible for keeping the sanctions regime firmly in place. Other major powers including France and Russia would like to see the sanctions eased.

Baghdad, whose troops were driven out of Kuwait by U.S.-led forces in the 1991 Gulf War, has called repeatedly for the embargo to be lifted, saying it is not justified now.

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