Word: iraqi
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...flight across the Middle East last week, they were not Israeli aircraft, which Arafat charges have recently been trying to ambush him. They were Turkish jet fighters, 16 of them, and they rose in waves to provide a protective escort as Arafat's plane flew over the Iraqi border and into Turkey. The U.S.-made F-16s hugged Arafat's wing tips, and their pilots saluted the Palestinian leader. "They were so close, I could see their eyes," recalls Murray Gart, the TIME senior correspondent on board Arafat's plane...
...West Bank and Gaza -- and run by a provisional government. At 59, Arafat is a man both admired as a revolutionary leader and despised as a terrorist, a leader who can be calmly reasonable or passionately shrill in the pursuit of his cause. Last week Arafat borrowed an Iraqi jet for a brief trip to Turkey, complete with a Turkish air force fighter escort. During his trip he met with assistant managing editor Karsten Prager and senior correspondent Murray J. Gart for eight hours of conversation, partly aboard his plane and also in the Baghdad headquarters that doubles...
...generated some new respect for the shy but persistent Perez de Cuellar, whose steady, closed-door approach to diplomacy is now bearing fruit. Both sides in the Iran-Iraq conflict say it was only because they trusted Perez de Cuellar that they were ultimately willing to talk. Says an Iraqi diplomat: "He is a man of his word, and he does not take sides...
Given the gravity of the situation, the quip seemed inappropriate at best. "I was struck by the fact that you haven't brought your gas masks with you," Iraqi Defense Minister Adnan Khairallah chided Western journalists assembled in Baghdad. Yet when pressed, Khairallah was unable to deny categorically the allegation that Iraq employed chemical weapons -- outlawed by the 1925 Geneva Protocol -- in putting down a rebellion of Kurds. Asserting that the use of poison gas was "technically impossible" in the Kurdish villages in dispute, Khairallah reiterated Baghdad's position that, in any case, its war against the Kurds...
...Japan and most West European countries, finally called on the U.N. to send a team of experts to Iraq to investigate the Kurdish charges. Three other countries, among them the Soviet Union, lent their support to the effort after the Reagan Administration leaked word that the U.S. had intercepted Iraqi military communications confirming that lethal gas had been used against the Kurds. Iraq promptly rejected U.N. inspection as a challenge to its sovereignty and instead invited journalists to tour the disputed area, a move that many interpreted as an artful dodge. A British diplomat dryly observed, "Experts are trained...