The mounting prospects of an American attack on Iraq have prompted Iraqi President, Saddam Hussein, to dispatch his son Qusai to Tehran for talks on possible arms acquisitions.
According to an exclusive report published Sunday by the London-based pan-Arab daily Asharq al-Awsat, Qusai Saddam Hussein, the No. 2 man in Iraq, paid a highly secret visit last week to Tehran, where he held military and security talks with senior Iranian officials.
According to the report, Qusai and an accompanying delegation expressed Baghdad’s interest in buying military equipment from Iran “in cash and at very high prices.” The delegation’s military shopping list was topped by a request for an unspecified number of “Shihab I, II and III missiles, at exorbitant prices,” the daily added.
Additionally, Qusai raised the issue of the military and civilian planes that Iraqi pilots flew for safe keeping in Iran on the eve of the 1991 Gulf war. According to Asharq al-Awsat, Qusai offered to buy back each of Iraq’s French Mirage F1 and Soviet Mig and Sukhoi warplanes at half its original price “in cash.”
Quoting a “reliable Iranian source” close to Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, the newspaper added Iranian President Mohammed Khatami and his aides were unaware of the visit and government sources denied any knowledge of it.
Qusai and his delegation were driven from the Iraq-Iran border to the city of Kermanshah in western Iran and then flown aboard a military aircraft to Mehrabad military air base near Tehran. He then had talks with top Revolutionary Guards officers and Defense Ministry officials at the Saadabad complex, a former palace of the late Shah, now used to accommodate visiting heads of state. (Albawaba.com)
