Iran confirms cooperation with Iraq on flights for Hizbullah

NICOSIA — Iran confirms that it has launched cooperation with Iraq on air flights that Western intelligence sources say includes the transfer of Iranian weapons to the Lebanese Hizbullah movement.

Iranian officials said that Iraq now allows the use of its air space for flights from Teheran to Damascus and other destinations. They said Iranian authorities have ended the use of Turkish air space for Iranian flights to Damascus.

In early October, the officials said, Iran and Iraq agreed on the use of Iraqi air space for flights from Teheran to Damascus. They said Iran no longer uses Turkey's air space.

"Since the route over Turkey is not suitable for these flights, and wanting to develop relations with Iraq, particularly in transportation, Iran believes these flights should go over Iraq," Iranian Transportation Minister Mahmoud Hojjati said.

The Iranian minister was quoted on Tuesday by the official Islamic Republic News Agency as making this assertion in October after meeting his Iraqi counterpart Ahmed Morteza.

Iranian officials did not say that the Islamic regime is using Iraqi air space to send weapons to Hizbullah. That assertion was made by both Israeli and Western intelligence sources over the last month.

The sources said Teheran began using Iraq for the air transfer of Hizbullah weapons in October after Turkey intercepted an Iranian passenger jet believed to have contained mortars and Katyusha rockets for the Lebanese Shi'ite movement. The sources said the weapons were seized after the plane was intercepted and forced to land in southwestern Turkey.

On Tuesday, an Iranian official said the United Nations does not allow Teheran to grant flights bound for Baghdad to use Iranian air space. "Iran's air space is merely allowed to be used by humanitarian flights agreed upon by the United Nations and Iran's Foreign Ministry," Gholam-Abbas Aramesh, a deputy chief of the Civil Aviation Organization told the Iranian Abrar daily.

In a related development, Israeli negotiations with Hizbullah for the release of three soldiers captured by the Shi'ite militia are said to have collapsed. Hizbullah is said to have rejected an Israeli offer to relay the remains of Hizbullah fighters for information on the three soldiers.

Hizbullah insisted that it first free Hizbullah prisoners for any information on the three soldiers. The negotiations were conducted through the German government.

"I don't know where it stands exactly but I know the German contacts have stopped," Eyal Avitan, the brother of Israeli captive Adi Avitan, told Israeli army radio. "There is intelligence that they are alive. But no one sent any proof, like a videocassette or a sign or an object or anything else.