Fierce Gulf battles claimed

Press, 3 August 1983, Page 11

Fierce Gulf battles claimed

NZPA-Reuter Bahrain Fierce exchanges have been reported in the Gulf war, Iran insisting that it will go on fighting until Iraq accepts its peace conditions. The Iraqi News Agency said that Iraqi troops had repulsed a fresh Iranian attack yesterday in the central sector of the front after hand-to-hand combat.

In Iran, Teheran radio said that heavy fighting was continuing and that Iranian forces held the upper hand and were reinforcing their positions.

Iran launched its offensive in the central sector on Saturday to recapture Iranian territory around the town of Mehran and to seize strategic border heights. It came a week after another Iranian drive into the border mountains of northern Iraq in the Haj Omran area.

The Iraqis subsequently said that they had driven out the Iranians in the north, but Teheran denied that.

The Iranian Foreign Minister, Dr Ali Akbar Vellayati, said yesterday that the war would continue until Iraq accepted Teheran’s peace conditions. These were a complete Iraqi withdrawal from Iranian territory, payment by Bagdad of war damages, and the punishment of Iraq for invading Iran. “Our conditions are the

same as before and these conditions must be realised. Until they are realised the war—which is in fact a defensive war to achieve our usurped rights—will continue,” Dr Vellayati said.

“If Iraq just declares that it accepts our conditions then we shall move into the next stage and state what has to be done.”

Dr Vellayati said that as part of the withdrawal, Iran demanded that Iraq should accept equal Iranian-Iraqi rights over the Shaft AlArab waterway which divides the two countries. He said that the Shaft should be divided along the so-called Thalweg line, running down the centre of the deepest shipping lane, as it was before the war erupted in September, 1980. One of Iraq’s main war demands was full Iraqi sovereignty over the waterway. Iran had seen no sign that Iraq was moving towards accepting the Iranian terms, he said.

Iraq has called increasingly for a cease-fire and an end to the war but Teheran has rejected these calls.