Iran has said the remains of as manyas 200 people found near Basra were Iranian soldiers killedduring the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war and demanded their immediaterepatriation.
Iraq has said the bodies, discovered on Saturday by Britishsoldiers in a military complex near Basra, were those of Iraqiskilled in the 1980s conflict and recently returned by Tehran.
But the head of Iran's Committee for Searching for theMissing in Action said the corpses had been unearthed in recentmonths by joint Iran-Iraq search teams.
"Unfortunately, because of Iraq's negligence, these corpseswere not returned to Iran," Brig. Gen. Mirfeysal Baqerzadeh wasquoted as saying by the Jomhuri-ye Eslami newspaper.
Although the Iran-Iraq war, in which hundreds of thousandswere killed on both sides, ended 15 years ago, the two countriesstill exchange bodies and prisoners of war. The latest prisonerswap ended on March 19th - a day before the start of the currentwar.