The Iranian Foreign Minister, Mr Kamal Kharazi, arrived in Baghdad yesterday by air, the first visit to the Iraqi capital by an Iranian foreign minister in 10 years. Mr Kharazi said he wanted to resolve differences between the two countries.
The minister arrived on an Iran Air flight, the first from the airline to land in Baghdad since the United Nations imposed sanctions on Iraq in 1990.
Mr Kharazi told reporters at Saddam International airport he would have a series of meetings with Iraqi Foreign Minister Mr Mohammad Said al-Sahhaf "to settle unresolved questions".
"Through understanding and good neighbourly relations all the unresolved questions will be solved," he said.
Mr Sahhaf, who met the Iranian minister at the airport, told reporters the visit should see the relaunch of joint committees set up in 1997 but since frozen.
He said the visit, expected to last until tomorrow, was "important to start seriously building good relations between the two countries".
Mr Kharazi went straight to the major Shiite holy shrines at Kerbala, 110 km, and Najaf, 160 km south of Baghdad, for Friday prayers, an Iraqi official said.
The Iran Air flight follows a series of tests led by Russia and France and followed by Arab countries, against an air embargo imposed since the 1990 invasion of Kuwait.
Paris and Moscow say the air embargo on Iraq as part of the sanctions regime does not cover private non-commercial flights, while Washington and London insist all flights must be approved by the sanctions committee.
Tehran has opposed the strict sanctions regime but nonetheless followed the international embargo against the country with which it fought a savage war from 1980 to 1988.
Amid signs of warming relations, Mr Sahhaf and Mr Kharazi met on September 20th in New York during the United Nations General Assembly's Millennium summit and reviewed "prospects for renewing contacts between their countries to solve unresolved questions and advance along the path to normalisation", the Iraqi News Agency reported.
Iranian President Dr Mohammad Khatami met Iraq's Vice-President Mr Taha Yassin Ramadan on September 29th on the sidelines of the OPEC summit in Caracas.
Mr Kharazi's visit is the first by an Iranian foreign minister since Mr Ali Akbar Velayati travelled to Iraq in November 1990 ahead of the Gulf War in which Iraqi forces were evicted from Kuwait.
After their war Iran and Iraq, which never broke diplomatic relations during the conflict, promoted ties to charge d'affaires level in 1990. But normalisation has been held up by the prisoners issue.