WORLD : Iran Suggests POW Exchange, Troop Pullout to Break Impasse
In a shift that could break its post-war deadlock with Iraq, Iran offered today to exchange prisoners of war simultaneously with an Iraqi withdrawal from its border territory.
The official news agency IRNA said Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Velayati laid out Iran’s new position to U.N. envoy Jan Eliasson in Tehran today “to help break the present artificial impasse which benefits no one.”
Iran previously insisted Iraq withdraw from 1,000 square miles of its border territory before any other move could be taken to settle issues underlying the 1980-88 Persian Gulf war.
U.N.-mediated peace talks began after an August, 1988, cease-fire but went nowhere. Iraq insisted that the exchange of about 100,000 POWs and dredging of the disputed Shatt al Arab waterway should come first.
The standoff kept alive fears of resumption of the war, in which up to a million people were killed on both sides, according to Western estimates.
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