Yemen Grants Iraqi Asylum; Spain Expels 7

Yemen granted asylum to Iraq’s ambassador to Egypt on Sunday, top Foreign Ministry officials here said, while Spain ordered seven Iraqi Embassy officials to leave the country.

Mohsen Khalil, Iraq’s ambassador to Yemen from 1991 to 1996 and to Egypt since 1999, applied to Yemen’s consulate in Cairo on Wednesday for asylum, the officials said on condition of anonymity. He was expected to arrive within a day.

Yemen’s decision to accept Khalil follows reports that he requested asylum from two Arab countries -- Yemen and Syria -- as President Saddam Hussein’s regime began collapsing in the U.S.-led war on Iraq. Phone calls to the Iraqi Embassy in the Egyptian capital went unanswered, and Khalil couldn’t be reached for comment.

Khalil, in his 50s, has also been serving as Iraq’s representative to the Cairo-based headquarters of the Arab League. He was Hussein’s press secretary in the 1980s.

In Madrid, the decision to declare seven Iraqi Embassy officials persona non grata was conveyed Sunday to the Iraqi charge d’affaires, Abdelaziz Hussein, according to a Spanish official. Hussein was not among the seven, and the embassy will stay open, the official said.

No reason for the expulsion was given, but Spain’s national news agency Efe suggested that it may have been related to a report in the daily ABC that the Iraqi mission chief had recently informed the Spanish government that a number of guns as well as ammunition had been stored secretly in the embassy.