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Asefi dismisses dispatch of Iranian forces to Iraq

IRNA - Islamic Republic News Agency

Tehran, Aug 1, IRNA -- Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi 
here Sunday said dispatch of forces to Iraq will get the forces 
involved in a critical situation there. 
Addressing domestic and foreign reporters, he stressed that no 
Muslim or Arab state is willing to dispatch its forces to the 
war-torn Iraq under the present conditions. 
He further urged the occupying forces to leave Iraq and to let 
the United Nations supervise the activities of foreign forces in 
that war-torn country. 
On talks held between Iranian and European experts in the past 
few days, Asefi said the contents of negotiations were confidential 
and not for publication. 
The European officials have not published any reports on the 
negotiations, he said, adding that only some European and Iranian 
mass media have published some reports from their own points of view. 
Referring to the Iran-Iraq economic seminar being held in Tehran, 
Asefi said the seminar is to be attended by the Iraqi finance 
minister and deputy foreign minister as well as a group of Iraqi 
tradesmen. 
Various trade, banking, economic, development and agricultural 
committees will discuss bilateral economic cooperation between the 
two countries in the two-day seminar. 
The presence of hundreds of Iraqi nationals along with Iranian 
officials and businessmen is an indication of the existing will for 
expansion of economic ties between the two countries, he reiterated. 
He further paid tribute to the several Foreign Ministry employees 
and IRNA correspondent who were killed in Afghanistan on August 8, 
1998. 
The file on assassination of the Iranian nationals is still open 
and that Tehran follows up the case carefully, the Foreign Ministry 
spokesman stressed. 
IRNA correspondent, Mahmoud Saremi, along with eight Iranian 
diplomats were assassinated in the city of Mazar-i-Sharif, northern 
Afghanistan, when Taliban militia attacked the building housing the 
Iranian Consulate on August 8, 1998. 
The day has since been annually observed as Journalists` Day in 
Iran. 
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