Baghdad Airport Opens for Business

Aug. 17 -- Iraq today announced the reopening of Baghdad’s international airport after 10 years of enforced closure, but the move remained symbolic given the lack of prospects for a lifting of U.N. sanctions in the near future.

An Iraqi Airways plane carrying passengers from western Iraq landed at a deserted Saddam International Airport during the climax of an official ceremony.

Iraqi officials took reporters on a tour of the facility with its refurbished passenger terminal, including duty-free shops.

Civilian air traffic at the airport ceased when international sanctions were imposed on Iraq days afterPresident Saddam Hussein sent his forces into Kuwait in August 1990. That made Baghdad among the few capitals in the world inaccessible by scheduled international flights.

Iraq says there are no United Nations Security Council resolutions, governing the 1991 Gulf War cease fire, that prevent Baghdad from flying civilian planes into and out of the country.

“Our message to all friends … is that they are welcome to use this airport,” Transport Minister Ahmed Murtada Ahmed Khalil told reporters at the airport.

“There is absolutely no [U.N.] decision to ban flights to and from Iraq. This is an American, British and Zionist decision,” he said, adding that several airlines from friendly states had expressed willingness to fly to Iraq.

Civil Flights Breach Sanctions

The U.N. sanctions committee on Iraq maintains that civil flights to and from Iraq are an economic resource whose reinstatement would breach the sanctions regime.

Iraq dispersed 37 passenger airliners to foreign airports shortly before the Gulf War to protect them against possible bombing. They have been stranded at those airports since.

The sanctions committee has previously turned down a request from Baghdad to fly the airliners home to Iraq.

Since 1997, Iraq has defied U.N. sanctions by sending civilian planes laden with Muslim pilgrims to perform the Haj in Saudi Arabia.