Word: iraqi
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...along the Shatt al Arab and other segments of the Iraq-Iran border, Iraq came up with its own demands, which if met, it said, would end the hostilities. Having initiated the war, Baghdad laid down four conditions that might stop it. Iran would have to agree to respect Iraqi sovereignty over its own land and waters, would have to maintain good relations with its Arab neighbors along the gulf, would have to promise not to meddle in Iraq's internal affairs, and as a kind of catchall, would have to refrain from "aggressive" activities...
...Iraqi plan did not get anywhere in Tehran. Recognizing Iraqi control over land and waters meant giving up the Shatt al Arab. Not meddling in Iraq's internal affairs implied cutting links with the Shi'ites of Iraq, who represent half the country's population and have long had close ties to the Shi'ites of Iran, particularly since their most holy shrines are in Iraq at An Najaf and Karbala. Iran, on hearing the terms, turned them down out of hand...
...back Iraq could mean the loss of a carefully nurtured Iranian connection. Thus Moscow contented itself with asking both countries to stop the fighting quickly. If they did not, the Soviets warned, the U.S. would take advantage. "While calling by word of mouth for neutrality in the Iranian-Iraqi conflict," the Soviet news agency TASS said after the New York meeting between Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko and U.S. Secretary of State Edmund Muskie, "Washington is in fact building up tensions and making a choice between direct interference in the Iranian-Iraqi conflict and the possibility of launching international intervention...
...Paris, French President Valery Giscard d'Estaing told Tariq Aziz that the crisis was a "bilateral affair," best solved by the region's Islamic states. An Elysée spokesman later said that no spare parts for French weapons in the Iraqi arsenal would be forthcoming while the fighting continued. But he said that France would honor a $1.6 billion arms agreement with Iraq involving the sale of 60 Mirage F-l jet fighters, as well as tanks, antitank weapons, radar, guided missiles and patrol boats-all part of an Iraqi attempt to diversify its weapons inventory away...
Part of the Iraqi-French deal covers the sale of a nuclear reactor-a development that has caused great anxiety in Israel, which fears that Iraq, one of the Jewish state's archenemies, could develop a nuclear weapons potential. Indeed the Iran-Iraq conflict, the first recent major crisis in the region in which Israel is not involved, was being closely watched in Jerusalem. "That fight," said an Israeli official acidly, "is proof that there is an inherent instability in the Middle East of which we are not a part...