Iraq, Iran Agree to Solve Dispute over Border Oil Field

Iraqi and Iranian officials will meet next week to try to solve their border issues, including the dispute over a southern Iraqi oil well which Iranian forces occupied last month, foreign ministers of the two neighboring countries said Thursday. Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki made the announcement after meeting his Iraqi counterpart, Hoshyar Zebari, in Baghdad. "Everything will be solved," Mottaki told a joint news conference. "Joint technical committees will start meetings in a week from now, and the borders between the two brotherly countries will be marked," he added.

"We have agreed to normalize the situation on the two countries' borders and bring it back to where it was standing before," Zebari said. The issue of the oil well and all other issues can be solved bilaterally between the two countries, he added. Iraqi officials said last month that Iranian forces occupied Well No. 4 on the al-Fakkah field, in Missan Province in southern Iraq, which straddles the two countries' frontier. The field has estimated reserves of 1.55 million barrels and is part of a cluster of fields Iraq unsuccessfully put up for auction last June.

Iraqi officials said Iranian forces have since withdrawn 50 meters away from the well but they still control the area and are preventing Iraqi oil workers from reaching the well.....Read the entire article.


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Iraq Accuses Iran of Violating Border, Demands Withdrawal From Territory

Iraq’s National Security Council said today that Iran violated their shared border and Iraq’s “territorial integrity” and called on the Islamic republic to withdraw its forces from the region. Iraq summoned the Iranian ambassador in Baghdad and has begun “diplomatic steps” to resolve the situation, Iraqi government spokesman Ali Al Dabbagh said in a statement after a meeting of the security council.

Iranian forces entered Iraq at dawn yesterday and occupied an oil well in the East Maysan oil field, Zafer Nazmi, a border guard general, said earlier today. The Iranian forces positioned tanks around the well in the al-Fakah region, 450 kilometers (280 miles) south of Baghdad. The two neighbors have disputed the border of southeast Iraq for decades.

“The council stressed that the incursion is a violation of Iraq’s border and territorial integrity and called on Iran to withdraw from well 4 and lower the Iranian flag from the well tower immediately,” according to the statement. Crude oil for January delivery rose 71 cents, or 1 percent, to settle at $73.36 a barrel today on the New York Mercantile Exchange. It rose as much as 2.8 percent in intraday trading on news of the incursion.....Read the entire article.


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