IRAN REJECTED QOSA HOSEYN’S DEMANDS
PARIS First Aug. (IPS) Mr. Qosa Hoseyn, Iraqi dictator's younger son, in meeting with high-ranking Iranian officers ten days ago, had urged Iran to give back all planes Iraq had sent to Iran in order to save them from destruction by the attacking Americans, informed sources reported.
The Paris-based "Iran va Jahan" (Iran and the World) internet website said Thursday, quoting "highly informed sources", that Mr. Qosa had met with Major General Baqer Zolqadr, a deputy Commander in Chief of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards in a border town in Iranian territory.
In the meeting, according to Iran va Jahan, the younger Hoseyn, who is the
commander of his father’s special guards and also the military secret
services, presented his Iranian host with three demands, that included the
returning of all military planes, the sale of an unspecified numbers of the
Iranian-made "Shahab-III" surface to air missiles and also
providing Baghdad with important quantities of foodstuff and medicines.
As the allied forces, led by the Americans, started flat bombing of Iraq in1991, Saddam Hoseyn, after having assured Iranian agreement, ordered most of his military planes, including Soviet-made MIGs and French-made Mirages as well as more than twenty Boeing airliners to fly to safety in neighbouring Iran.
To repeated Iraqi demands for the return of the planes, Tehran has always said that out of the double dozen planes that had reached Iranian airspace, most of them had crushed-landed, due to technical problems.
But Iranian military sources say the MIGs had been "cannibalised" to use them as spare parts for Iranian planes bought from Moscow while the airliners are in service in Iranian domestic lines.
According to the sources, Mr. Zolqadr has told Mr. Qosa that he is not in a position to answer his requests for the purchase of missiles, but he can assure him that none of the plane Iraq had sent to Iran are worth flying, since all of them are badly damaged and out of use.
In an orchestrated move aimed at creating a smoke screen covering the controversial visit, while Iranian official would categorically deny that Mr. Qosa had come secretly to Iran, Mr. Oda Hoseyn, Saddam’s elder son, would warn Tehran against any co-operation with Washington’s plans to attack Iraq and the State-run Baghdad Television aired the "confessions" of two Iraqi who would "confess" to espionage for the Islamic Republic.
Iraq attacked Iran on September 1980 without declaring war, banking on the chaos that was reigning over the situation in Iran following the 1979 Islamic revolution that had toppled the Monarchy regime in the one hand and the decapitation of Iranian Imperial armies, mostly the Air Forces, considered as second to Israel’s, by the Islamic revolutionaries.
The war lasted eight years and ended with no victor, no vanquished, after Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the leader of the Islamic revolution, agreed to drink the "cup of poison" which consisted of accepting a UN proposed cease-fire.
However, Iranian and Arab sources noticed that following American characterisation of both Iran and Iraq as "evil states", there has been efforts, mostly from the Iranian side, for the formation of an anti-American front that would also includes Syria and "Palestine". ENDS QOSA ZOLGAR MEETING 1802