TEHRAN – Iraqi Minister of Displacement and Migration Abd al-Samad Sultan said Baghdad would most likely start practical measures for the expulsion of thousands of anti-Iranian terrorists from the country within the next few weeks.
The required coordination has been done for the expulsion of 3,000 members of the anti-Iran terrorist group, the Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO), from the Ashraf camp near Baghdad, but due to certain problems in Iraq, the issue has not been finalized yet, the visiting Iraqi minister added in a meeting with Iranian Interior Minister Sadeq Mahsouli here in Tehran on Monday.
The MKO, whose main stronghold has been in Iraq’s Diyala province since the 1980s, is blacklisted by much of the international community, including the United States.
Iraq originally announced that it would evict the camp and expel the MKO terrorists from the country in 2008.
Since the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, the group has been strongly backed by neo-conservatives in the United States, who also argue for the MKO to be taken off the US terror list.
Elsewhere in the meeting between the Iranian and Iraqi ministers, Sultan appreciated the Iranian nation’s hospitality to Iraqi immigrants, and said,”The Islamic Republic has provided extensive aids for the Iraqi nation in grounds of health and sanitation, education and service-providing.”
Referring to the repatriation of Iraqi emigrants who fled the country due to prevailing insecurities under and after Saddam’s rule over the nation, he announced that Iran and Iraq have formed a committee to prepare the required ground for their return.
Mahsouli, for his part, referred to the problems of the Iraqi immigrant and reiterated,”Many Iraqi people came to Iran after insecurities, war and Saddam’s dominance over the country and today more studies and surveys are needed to gradually resolve the problems of these immigrants.”