Iran says it’s captured key Iraqi radar

Press, 20 February 1986, Page 6

Iran says it’s captured key Iraqi radar

NZPA-Reuter New York Iran’s Ambassador to the United Nations said yesterday that navigation in the Gulf was now guaranteed because Iran had captured a main Iraqi radar installation. “We have captured a very, very big radar station which was reviewing the Persian Gulf waterway and also locating the third party ships that the Iraqi forces used to attack,’’ the Ambassador, Dr Said Rajaie-Kho-rassani, said. Giving details of Iran’s latest drive into southern Iraq, he said, “With the disentanglement of that radar network, we believe that the safety of navigation on the Persian Gulf is guaranteed from now on.” Responding to questions, Dr Rajaie said, “Now the third party vessels will not be hit by Iraqis. “It is open and safe. They can go to Kuwait, they can go to Saudi Arabia, they can go to Kharg Island, they can go everywhere. “No-one is going to hit a Turkish ship, a Japanese ship, a Kuwaiti ship, any ship in the Persian Gulf.”

Dr Rajaie held the news conference shortly before the start of a Security Council debate on the latest developments in the Gulf war. The debate had been requested by a group of Arab States, including Iraq. He repeated that he would not take part,

despite the urging of the Council’s president, unless certain conditions were met.

These included council condemnation of the use of chemical weapons by Iraq, reaffirmation of the need to abide strictly by the 1925 Geneva Protocol prohibiting the use of gas and bacteriological warfare, condemnation of threats against civil aviation and attacks on Iran’s civilian population, and condemnation of all violations of international law.

An Iraqi Army commander said yesterday that Iran was preparing to launch a new offensive through the southern Iraqi marshes. The commander of the 3rd Corp, Major-General Maher Abed Rashid, told foreign reporters at his headquarters on the Shatt al-Arab waterway that the Iranians had massed huge numbers of their troops for a new offensive.

Foreign diplomats said earlier this week that Iran had massed hundreds of thousands of Regular Army and volunteer forces at border towns to start a new thrust across the Hawizeh marshes, east of the Tigris River.

Iran launched a Shatt al-Arab offensive nearly two weeks ago and said it had captured the unused oil terminal of Faw, at Iraq’s southern tip. Iraq said it had sent its troops to encircle the Iranian invading force, putting it in a "death

circle,” killing thousands of enemy soldiers and destroying large quantities of arms and ammunition. General Rashid, whose men repelled an Iranian attack on the east Basra sector in the southern Gulf war front, said his troops counter-attacked and retook a large part of the Majnoon oilfields at the Hawizeh marshes.

General Rashid said his troops had “liberated” 90 per cent of the Majnoon oilfields and “kicked the Iranians out from all the oil wells of the billiondollar oilfield?’ He said his army had taken back the last oilfield in an assault on Majnoon last week.

“The Iranians are now holding a two-kilometre strip from the Majnoon Island, but no oil wells,” he said.

The Majnoon Island area was occupied by the Iranians early in 1984.

General Rashid denied that his troops had used chemical weapons in the recent battles against the Iranians, saying “we do not need such weapons to destroy our enemy.” He said his army had eliminated about four Iranian divisions, two of them Regular Army forces, in a counter-attack across the northern part of Shatt al-Arab last week.

“We expect the enemy to attack at any moment again ... but even if it attacks with 18 divisions we will tear them to pieces and annihilate them,” he said.