Miro to visit Baghdad within few days

Well-informed Sources in Damascus quoted Syrian official sources as saying that the Syrian prime minister Muhammad Mustafa Miro will during the few coming days visit Iraq, at the invitation of the Iraqi vice- President Muhammad Yassin Ramadan.

Miro will be the highest ranking Syrian official who will be visiting Baghdad since severing relations between the two countries in 1982. This visit is considered the culmination of the process of development of bilateral relations started in 1997.

The sources expected Miro to arrive in Baghdad on August 11, adding that Miro will discuss during this very important visit maters relating to the increasing economic co-operation between Syria and Iraq as the two countries aspire to increase the ceiling of their bilateral commercial exchange to USD one billion.

Observers ruled out that Miro, who is a member of the regional leadership of the ruling Baath Party, will discuss politics and the doctrines differences frozen between the Baathists of the two countries, in a way that the visit to be confined to its co-operation economic frame in the context of Syria's seek to expand its markets and the attempt made by Iraq to break the siege imposed o it since 1990.

The Iraqi vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan signed in Damascus a free trade agreement with Syria in January 31st this year.

The executive protocol of the agreement is the establishment of a free trade zone including immediate abrogation of the customs fees and taxes of reciprocated impact between the two countries. These include all exchanged commodities between the two countries of the national origin.

Trade relations between the two countries started to take its due course in 1997 by a visit of a Syrian trade delegation to Iraq, which re-opened the closed borders between the two countries since 1982.