BAGHDAD Iran's foreign minister, on a visit to Iraq, has said that the two countries have agreed to form a joint commission to oversee border issues and that its primary task will be to "block saboteurs" crossing their mutual border.
"We plan to form a joint commission between Iran and Iraq to control our borders and block the way to saboteurs whose aim is to destabilize the security of the two countries," the foreign minister, Manouchehr Mottaki, said in Najaf on Saturday after talks with Iraq's most powerful Shiite religious leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali Husseini al-Sistani.
Mottaki, who was taking part in only the second visit by an official Iranian government delegation since the downfall of Saddam Hussein in 2003, said improved border controls would be part of a wide effort to build close ties between the countries, including $1 billion in Iranian economic assistance to Shiite and Kurdish areas of Iraq.
The announcement in Najaf was made as U.S. military commanders and diplomats were focusing new attention on what they said was strong evidence that a covert flow of weapons and money from Iran to Shiite militia groups in Iraq had fueled sectarian violence here. Action to tighten security on the weakly patrolled Iran-Iraq border is among the measures U.S. officials have urged on the new Iraqi government, which is now led by Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/05/28/news/border.php
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