Serbia, Iraq to resume military cooperation
BELGRADE (AFP) — Serbia and Iraq agreed Monday to resume military cooperation, as the first top Iraqi official visited Belgrade since the end of dictatorial regimes in the two countries.
Serbia's Defence Minister Dragan Sutanovac and his Iraqi counterpart Abdul-Qadir al-Obaidi signed a letter of intent to resume cooperation, a statement from the Serbian defence ministry said.
During the decades-long dictatorship of Iraq's Saddam Hussein, Baghdad had closely cooperated with Belgrade. Yugoslavia was ruled by communist dictator Josip Broz Tito and his successor in Serbia, late president Slobodan Milosevic.
After Milosevic's fall Serbia was suspected of having supplied Saddam's army with weaponry during the UN arms embargo, a charge Belgrade has persistently denied.
The cooperation ended after Milosevic was ousted in a popular uprising in October 2000. He died last year in his cell in the Hague, where he had been tried by a UN war crimes court for his role in the 1990s Balkans wars.
Saddam was finally toppled when US-led forces invaded Iraq in March 2003 and executed last year for crimes against humanity.
