BAGHDAD — Baghdad has repatriated almost 4,000
of its citizens stuck on the Belarus borders with
EU members Poland, Lithuania
and Latvia in recent weeks, Iraq's foreign minister said Sunday.
اضافة اعلان
Since November 18, the Iraqi government has
organized "10 flights from Baghdad to Belarus" to repatriate its
citizens, Fuad Hussein told a press conference in Baghdad with his Lithuanian
counterpart.
"We have been able to repatriate around
4,000 Iraqis who were stuck on the Belarus borders with Poland, Lithuania and
Latvia," he said.
Foreign ministry spokesman Ahmed Al-Sahaf
later told AFP that "3,817 Iraqi migrants have been repatriated from
Belarus and 112 from Lithuania".
The flights have generally arrived in
Iraq's
autonomous Kurdistan region, where many of the would-be migrants are from,
before continuing to Baghdad.
Sahaf said some Iraqis were still stuck in
Belarus, but that "the difficult weather and complex environment do not
allow rescuers to determine their numbers".
Lithuanian Foreign Minister
Gabrielius Landsbergis, who also met with Prime Minister Mustafa Al-Kadhemi, said he
wanted "to bring in new cooperation ideas" with Iraq.
Since last summer, thousands of migrants,
many from the Middle East and Iraq in particular, had been camped on the
Belarus-EU border, often in bitter conditions, trying to enter the bloc.
The West has accused
Belarus of luring the
migrants to the border as revenge for sanctions against President Alexander
Lukashenko's regime.
Belarus has denied the claim and criticized
the EU for not taking in the migrants.
Read more Region and World
.jpg)
.jpg)
