Jordan announced official plans to send an airplane to Baghdad Wednesday on what it said would be an essentially humanitarian venture.
The flight would be the first such move by an Arab country, crowning efforts by the kingdom to put an end to the UN-imposed sanctions on Iraq.
Following a cabinet meeting, the acting culture and information minister, Mahmud Al-Kayed, said Jordan had informed the United Nations of "the departure on Wednesday of the airplane, which will return to Amman on Thursday."
Earlier Tuesday, government sources said the flight would depart for Baghdad within 48 hours.
He added that the cabinet had designated the flight a humanitarian one and that it would be carrying a "quantity of medicine."
He reaffirmed what Jordanian Foreign Minister Abdel Ilah al-Khatib said earlier Tuesday, that cabinet ministers and parliamentarians would be aboard the aircraft, adding that there would be "a number of doctors from the public and private sectors."
Calling the flight a gesture of "solidarity with the Iraqi people," Kayed said he hoped it would be the "prelude to the organization of regular flights between Amman and Baghdad."
Jordanian opposition and Islamist figures who have long campaigned to press Jordan to take the lead and restore air links with its Arab neighbor and main source of oil needs quickly praised the move.
"The flight will reflect the desire of the Jordanian people to be the first Arabs to take the initiative to break the embargo on Iraq," Fawaz Zreikat of the National Committee of Mobilization To Defend Iraq, told AFP.
"We hope it will pave the way for the resumption of regular flights," said Fawaz.
The head of the Islamist-led Bar Association, Saleh Armuti, who has repeatedly tried to organize a flight to Baghdad, said the official trip would be a "blessed and positive step."
Opposition MP Khalil Haddadin hoped he would be selected to be part of the trip, which he described as "long overdue".
Muslim Brotherhood spokesman Jamil Abu Baqr joined in the acclaim and said he hoped that other Arab countries will follow suit.
Earlier this month Jordan announced it had submitted a request to the United Nations to allow the resumption of air links with Baghdad and said it was awaiting an answer.
The cabinet last week discussed efforts deployed by King Abdullah II to put an end to the embargo and the attempts to resume scheduled flights to Iraq.
Baghdad has repeatedly urged Amman to reopen its air space for planes flying to and from Iraq, arguing that the UN trade embargo imposed on it after its 1990 invasion of Kuwait did not apply to passenger flights.
Iraqi Airways have been grounded since the Gulf war in 1991 with its fleet of some 30 planes stranded in Iraq, Iran, Jordan, Libya and Tunisia.
In April, Jordan forced a small Italian plane to land in the kingdom, accusing it of violating Jordanian airspace after a humanitarian flight out of Iraq.
Baghdad's Saddam International Airport officially reopened on August 17 and received several humanitarian flights from Russia and one from France but none from any Arab capital.
The latest announcement follows a brief meeting late Monday in Amman between Abu Ragheb and Iraqi Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan, who stopped in the Jordanian capital on his way to attend an OPEC summit in Venezuela.
Ramadan, who was accompanied by Iraqi Oil Minister Amer Rashid, discussed with Abu Ragheb ways of bolstering bilateral ties between the two countries.
Jordan depends totally on oil imports from Iraq and has been seeking to renew an annual oil agreement to obtain 4.8 million tones of Iraqi crude for the year 2000, half free and half at discount prices.
Under the deal, which is exempted under the UN sanctions on Baghdad, Jordan also hopes to export 300 million dollars worth of goods to Iraq in 2000.
Jordan, one of Washington's key Arab allies, used to be Iraq's top trading partner before the 1991 Gulf war and stayed out of a US-led coalition of Arab and Western forces that routed Iraqi troops from Kuwait -- AMMAN (AFP)
© 2000 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
