Iraq airline plans regular flights to Jordan

BAGHDAD, Iraq (Reuters) -- Iraqi Airways is waiting for approval from Jordan's aviation authorities to resume regular flights to Amman for the first time in 10 years, a local weekly newspaper said on Sunday.

"There are contacts between officials from the Iraqi transport ministry and their Jordanian counterparts to reach an agreement to resume flights," said the Ettihad (Union) weekly, which publishes mainly economic news.

It said the state-owned carrier was waiting for Jordanian officials to agree to an Iraqi Airways once-a-week round trip to Amman.

Commercial flights into and out of Iraq have been curbed since 1990 by U.N. sanctions imposed on Iraq for its invasion of Kuwait.

Baghdad says there are no U.N. Security Council resolutions, which govern the Gulf War ceasefire, that prevent civilian flights into and outside Iraq provided that the U.N. inspects planes to make sure they do not carry prohibited materials to Iraq.

The United States and a number of its allies say that all planes flying to and from Iraq need U.N. clearance.

Iraqi Airways, whose planes have been grounded since the 1991 Gulf War, resumed domestic flights in November, flying two planes a day to the southern city of Basra and the northern city of Mosul.

An Iraqi newspaper said last week that Jordan had agreed to hand back six Iraqi civilian airliners impounded since the Gulf War. But Jordanian aviation sources said in Amman that they did not know of any decision to return the planes to Iraq.

Jordan's national carrier Royal Jordanian (RJ) flew a round trip on November 30 for the first time in 10 years. The airline flew another plane last Thursday.

The first RJ flight had all the hallmarks of commercial trip challenging economic sanctions against Iraq, but Jordanian authorities insisted it was of humanitarian nature and had been cleared by the U.N. sanctions committee.

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