Iran-Iraq security pact appropriate road map to eliminate destabilizing factors: Security chief

Iran's security chief urges "full and precise" implementation of a security agreement with Iraq that entails the complete disarmament and re-location of anti-Iran terrorist groups operating in the semi-autonomous Kurdistan region.

In a Sunday meeting with Iraq's National Security Advisor Qasim al-Araji in Tehran, Secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) Ali Akbar Ahmadian said the agreement guarantees the border security.

He added that the pact is a "rational and appropriate" roadmap for the elimination of the factors that create insecurity in the two countries and the region.

On March 19, in Baghdad, Iran and Iraq signed a security agreement encompassing coordination in protecting the shared border.

Under the agreement, the Iraqi government had promised to disarm terrorist and separatist groups based in the Kurdistan region by September 19, vacate their military barracks, and transfer them to the camps established by the Baghdad government.

Iraqi Foreign Minister Fuad Hussein said on September 23 that his country has implemented all clauses of the security agreement.

He made the comment after Major General Mohammad Hossein Baqeri, the Chief of General Staff of Iran’s Armed Forces, said the country had given Iraq several more days to fully implement the security pact, stressing that all terrorist groups in the region must be disarmed.

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“What happened during this six-month respite was that [they] just distanced a bit from the borders of our country,” he said while thanking the Iraqi government for its efforts to disarm the separatists.

Elsewhere in his remarks, Ahmadian pointed to agreements signed between Tehran and Baghdad to expand relations and said the two sides have ample capacities for the improvement of all-out cooperation in various fields, particularly in the economic sector.

For his part, the top Iraqi security official reaffirmed his country's determination to implement the security deal with Iran.

He said that Baghdad would take every opportunity to strengthen relations with Tehran.

Iraq sets up 12 checkpoints along border with Iran 

The deputy commander of Iraq's Joint Operations, Lieutenant General Qais al-Mohammadawi, said on Sunday that his country has formed a higher committee which has been working for months on developing a mechanism to implement the security pact with Iran.

In an interview with the Iraqi News Agency (INA) published on Sunday, Mohammadawi said the committee is working under the chairmanship of the national security adviser and specialized officers from the ministries of defense, interior, advisory and security services.

He said 10 to 12 checkpoints had been set up over the past two weeks and separatist elements had been transferred from the border to specific places.

The Iraqi official said Baghdad would allow no one to use its soil as a springboard for aggression against neighboring countries, whether Iran, Turkey or other states. The commander, however, stressed the importance of respecting Iraq's sovereignty.

The presence of Kurdish terrorist groups, including the Kurdistan Democratic Party, Komala, Kurdistan Free Life Party, and the Kurdistan Freedom Party, has been a source of tension between Iran and Iraq for years, with these groups often carrying out terrorist attacks on Iranian soil.

Iran has, on countless occasions, warned Iraqi Kurdistan’s local authorities that it will not tolerate the presence and activity of terrorist groups along its northwestern borders, saying the country will give a decisive response should those areas become a haven for anti-Tehran terrorists.

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