LONDON - There is a ‘possibility’ that five Iranian officials held by the United States for nearly four months could be released soon, Iraq’s foreign minister said in an interview published Wednesday.
Hoshyar Zebari, speaking to The Independent from Baghdad, said that because of legal rules, the United States can only hold the group for six months, at which point they must make a decision on their fate. Zebari said that there was ‘a possibility they will be released’ because the US ‘can detain them for 90 days and this can be renewed once.’
| And in six months we'll have wrung them dry. |
‘This is the military rule for holding such people: charge them, hand them over to the Iraqi authorities or release them. The time for their detention will expire in June when a decision will have to be made.’
On January 11, US troops stormed an Iranian liaison office in Arbil, capital of the northern Iraqi Kurdistan region, and detained six employees, one of whom was later released. The United States has said the men had links to IranÂ’s elite Revolutionary Guards, and none of them held a diplomatic passport.
| "Yew ain't from 'round here, are yew." |
Zebari also said that a summit in the Egyptian city of Sharm el-Shaikh involving several countries meeting on IraqÂ’s future was a success in terms of defusing tensions between the United States and Iran, who have not had formal diplomatic relations since 1980.
‘No matter how dismissive the Iranians are about talking to the Americans, the Americans are players here,’ Zebari said. ‘And even if the Americans view the Iranians negatively they are here; they are players whether we want it or not.
‘Iran doesn’t want to bring down this government ... It’s friendly, it’s Shia-led; they know everybody in it. They could not find a better government in the lottery. It came to power legitimately through the popular will of the people.’ |