Iraq ‘cannot stop' Iran arms going to Syria

Iran has reduced flights of arms to Syria but Iraq cannot stop them completely and should not be treated as a "whipping boy," its foreign minister said on Friday. The United States has criticized Iraq for allowing Iran to fly weapons to Syria in support of embattled President Bashar al-Assad in a two-year-old civil war that has claimed more than 100,000 lives. On a visit to Washington, Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said that Iraq has inspected Iranian planes and complained to Tehran but that Baghdad did not have the means to prevent the flights. "I can tell you now they have gone down. They may not have stopped," Zebari said at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Saying that Russia also supplied Assad with weapons by sea, Zebari added: "We don't want to see, to take or to view Iraq as a whipping boy, let's say, for failing to hold others to their commitment." "But we will live up to our commitment. I think we will do more," he said. Source: AFP