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Iraqi officials said Iranian forces have since withdrawn 50 meters away from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.
The row over the oil-well occupation has, over the last few days, triggered
anti-Iranian demonstrations across Iraq and angry statements from politicians
accusing the government in Baghdad of supporting Iran.
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki accused certain "media" of
giving too much publicity to the incident in order to damage the "close
ties" between the two neighboring countries.
Iraqi and Iranian officials have frequently tussled over territory along their
1000-kilometer shared frontier, and brief incursions aren't uncommon. Oil
officials recently traded accusations about oil theft from the shared field at
the center of the dispute.
Iraq has accused Iran of siphoning crude oil from fields near the border, such
as Abu Gharb and al-Fakkah, both located in Missan Province. Iraq also accused
Iran last year of preventing Iraqi oil workers from developing the Abu Gharb
field.
"Technical dialogue is being held between the two countries to invest
jointly in these joint oil fields," Mottaki said. He gave no further details.