BAGHDAD, March 15 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Iraqi President Saddam Hussein on Thursday pardoned 27 Iranians serving jail terms in Iraq for various crimes, the online edition of the Iraqi News Agency INA said Thursday.
An Iraqi foreign ministry spokesman was quoted as saying that the decision proved Baghdad's desire to resolve humanitarian issues such as the fate of prisoners of war, those missing in action and refugees.
The freed prisoners were handed over to Iranian authorities at the border town of Al-Munziriya under the supervision of the International Committee of the Red Cross, he said.
It's not clear if those freed were prisoners of war (POW). The POW issue and support for opposition groups by both sides remain stumbling blocks to normalizing relations more than ten years after the war between the two countries ended.
Tehran has repeatedly denied Baghdad's charges it still holds 29,000 Iraqi prisoners. Iraq says 60,000 are missing. Iran claims that Iraq still holds some 3,000 Iranian soldiers, while Baghdad says it holds none but a handful who were involved in a regional uprising.
In Iran, the official news agency said that an Iraqi delegation would visit Iran soon for talks on those soldiers still unaccounted for from the neighbors' 1980-1988 war.
General Abdollah Najafi, in charge of Iran's POW office, said the visit was a "positive response" to a December request from Tehran for a "final resolution of the issue." Iran maintains it can "prove the existence" of Iranian troops still being held in Iraq.
Najafi said a visit by a Red Cross mission to Tehran two weeks ago had no "tangible" results for Iran but that there had been positive results for the Iraqi side. The results of the Red Cross negotiations with Iranian officials are expected to be made public in April.
