Islamic leader proposes eight-man peace mission

Press, 23 October 1980, Page 6

Islamic leader proposes eight-man peace mission

Teheran ■’ The Islamic Conference (Mr Habib Chatti) •'hoped to receive a reply ‘.from Iranian leaders soon on •’his proposed mission by ■'Muslim States aimed at en■ding the month-old Gulf, /war. *. Mr Chatti, secretary-gen-eral of the conference, has <been in Teheran since SunLday lobbying for support for ■•the new peace moves; he "was to meet the Prime Minister (Mr Mohammad Ali Rajai) today. Yesterday Mr Chatti said that after seeing Mr Rajai -Tie hoped for a reply to his for an eight-man '’lslamic delegation to arrange <a cease-fire between Iran Land Iraq and pave the way /for direct negotiations. £ Iran has repeatedly said j/that it will not negotiate ■until all Iraqi troops withdraw from Iranian territory, • and the revolutionary leader ( A y a t 6 1 l.a h Ruhollah is reported to 'have told Mr Chatti that 'lran would want to show • Iraq’s “crimes” to any mis- • sion. • But Mr Chatti said he was .. optimistic that Teheran • would agree to his ideas and

said the proposed commission would study ways of bringing about an Iraqi withdrawal. Mr Chatti’s trip appeared to have been upstaged with an announcement by Palestinian sources in Beirut that Iranian and Iraqi representatives to the United Nations ■had agreed to set up a non- ! aligned committee to help resolve the conflict. But a delegation from Yugoslavia, a prominent nonaligned nation, was the latest to receive a brusque reply in Teheran when Mr Rajai told them yesterday it was not a question of stopping the war but of Iraq withdrawing. Teheran Radio said Mr Rajai held a three-hour “extraordinary” meeting with his Cabinet on Tuesday night to report on his weekend trip to. New York, and his address to the United Nations Security Council. It gave no details. A United Nations spokesman announced that the Security Council had scheduled private consultations forj yesterday on “Iran, Iraq and other business.” The heaviest fighting in the war was reported yester-

[day at the two Iranian oil! cities on the disputed Shaul lal-Arab waterway. Iran said i jits entrenched defenders had < ihalted Iraqi tanks at the < ! Bagmanshir River bridge, 1 considered the gateway to Abadan. ji The Iranian News Agency said that during attacks by ; Iraqi aircraft on Abadan and Khorramshahr (renamed I IKhnuninshahr by Iran) two 1 'MiGs were shot down by ’ I anti-aircraft fire and both i [pilots were killed. 1 Iraqi invaders of the port city of Khnuninshahr were 1 met by snipers and bursts of i machine-gun fire in the ; rubble-strewn streets, Iran < said. Iranian and Iraqi jets j raided targets along the , 482 km battlefront, j Iran’s military command ( reported that there were j artillery exchanges near Dezful, 241 km north of Aba- . dan, and that Iranian helicopter gunships attacked ' Iraqi troops, "killing at least j 100.” A later Iranian dispatch ‘ said that more than 200 f Iraqis were killed in surprise J attacks in the central and 1 northern sectors and 28 c Iraqi tanks were destroyed. ‘

! Iran said that helicopteri borne troops recaptured two districts on the northern end of the front that had been overrun by Iraqi forces in the first week of the war. i Iranian jets attacked northern Iraqi towns, the Iraqi military command said, and also raided Iraq’s oilloading terminal at Fao on the northern tip of the Gulf. Iraq said two Iranian jets were shot down in the raids that killed 109 civilians and wounded 23. According to Teheran radio, Iraqi jets attacked Ahwaz, the capital of oil-rich Khuzestan Province, and also flew missions over Abadan. At some points, Iraqi forces were reported to have pushed more than 80km into Khuzestan province, which contains the main Iranian oil fields.

Iraq’s first Deputy Prime Minister (Mr Taha Yassin Ramadhan) was quoted as saying his country would hold any Iranian oilfields it captured “until there is a solution” to problems between the warring nations. He was interviewed in Bagdad by the Paris newspaper, "Le Monde.”