Full speed ahead for the Nimitz battleship on way Gulf, troubled Iraq
Iraq, Politics, 10/4/1997

The US Aircraft carrier Nimitz has been told to skip a stay in Singapore and proceed to the Gulf at top speed. The ship's journey was sped up due to an Iranian incursion into Iraqi airspace earlier this week, which underlined recent problems in the area, and elicited a warning from the United States that it would shoot down Iranian planes that invaded the "no-fly zone" in Iraq.

Iran said it bombed the Iraq-based People's Mujahedeen armed opposition group. The attack came shortly after Iran completed large-scale military exercises in which infantry forces and armored tanks supported by the fighter planes attacked sham enemy positions and cut the connections between command headquarters and enemy forces, possibly in preparation for the raid.

Relations between Iran and Iraq had been warming slightly since the election of Mohammed Khatemi to Iran's presidency. Iraq had agreed to allow Iranian Muslims to make pilgrimages to holy shrines in Iraq, and Iraq had stated that it would reopen talks for the release of an estimated 20,000 Iraqi soldiers held in Iran and 10,000 Iranian people in the Iraqi jails from the 1980-1988 Iraqi-Iranian war.

The Nimitz move was accompanied by a rise in oil prices. The price of crude oil jumped nearly a dollar a barrel to $22.76 US, its highest mark since February, according to a Wall Street Journal Report today.

Iraq is currently in the second phase of the UN-sponsored oil-for-food deal, which runs through December. Under the deal, Iraq can export up to $1 billion US of oil in exchange for food, medicine and other humanitarian supplies. Iraq has recently complained about slow deliveries of food and medicine and cut October rations to some areas this week because of shortages of supplies.

In addition to the Iran incident, Iraq has also been faced with Turkish military operations in its north over the past week. In cooperation with the Iraq-based Kurdistan Democratic Party, the Turkish military has entered Iraqi territory to attack members of the rebel Kurdistan Workers Party, which has been fighting since 1984 for self-rule in Southeast Turkey.

Previous Stories:
  Arabs dance to American foreign interest music   (10/4/1997)
  Iranian-Arab crisis due to Iran's attacks against Iraq   (10/3/1997)
  US aircraft carrier heads for Gulf   (9/26/1997)

Please add a link on your webiste pointing to ArabicNews.com and bookmark ArabicNews.com & subscribe to our daily email news bulletin.

Search