Iran and Iraq agreed to sign an agreement to hand over Iranian political refugees living in Iraq.

Iraq looks to hand back Iranian political refugees.

BAGHDAD,— The Iraqi and Iranian governments are planning to sign an agreement that would allow Baghdad to send Iranian political refugees back to their country.

Iran and Iraq agreed to sign an agreement to hand over Iranian political refugees living in Iraq.

 According to Iranian media reports, Iranian and Iraqi officials are working to finalize the agreement and will then ask the Iraqi parliament to approve the deal. Iranian state controlled media reports that, Tehran claims if approved, the pact would be one of the important agreements in its entire history, but there aren’t any official statements to back up those reports. And there haven’t been anything said from Iraqi side regarding the deal. “Iran is not a democratic country, that’s why people doubt its agreements with other countries,” Kadir Weriya, a member of the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran, an Iranian Kurdish opposition party based in Iraqi Kurdistan, told BasNews. Under the former Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein, war broke out between Iraq and Iran in September 1980. Eight years of fighting left more than 1 million people dead,www.ekurd.net blistering ties between Tehran and Baghdad. “This agreement is against international law and we are against any deal that involves returning political activists,” Weriya added. The fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime in 2003 led to the normalization of relations between Iran and Iraq. As of January 2010, the two countries have signed over 100 economic and cooperative agreements. Iran is also now Iraq’s largest trade partner. The new Iraqi regime also allows Shia Muslims from Iran to make pilgrimage to holy Shia sites in Iraq. In March 2008, former Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad became the first Iranian president to visit Iraq since Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has made several state visits to Iran since 2006 and expressed sympathy with Iran over its nuclear energy program and the Syrian crisis. Earlier this year US Secretary of State John Kerry pressed Iraq to prevent Iranian flights allegedly carrying military equipment to Syria through its airspace, and Iraq has revealed that they have inspected Iranian flights in route to Syria. However, a Kurdish representative in the Iraqi Parliament believes the government doesn’t have the power to send Iranian political refuges their back to their country. “This deal has not reached the Iraqi Parliament. In some special cases the government can sign agreements, but not this kind of deal, because the refuges are registered with the UN and the Iraqi government cannot hand them over to Iran,” said Iraqi MP Muaed Tayib. By Hemin Salih and Bestun Kakayi. Published by Ekurd.net in cooperation with Basnews Copyright ©, respective author or news agency, basnews.com