A Saudi Arabian delegation is to travel to Baghdad this week to start preparations to reopen an embassy in the Iraqi capital for the first time in 25 years, official Saudi Arabian media outlets said on Saturday.
Thawed relations between Saudi Arabia, ruled by Sunnis, and Iraq, led by Shiites, could help strengthen a regional alliance against Islamic State extremists who have seized territory in Iraq and Syria.
Saudi Arabia closed its Baghdad embassy in 1990, after the then-Iraqi president Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait.
It has long accused Iraq of being too close to Shiite Iran — its main regional rival — and of encouraging sectarian discrimination against Sunnis, a charge Baghdad denies.
The Saudi move would help return Iraq to the Arab circle of nations “after an absence since the toppling of the Saddam Hussein regime and the penetration of the Iranian regime into the joints of the Iraqi state,” said Abdullah al-Askar, head of the foreign affairs committee on Saudi Arabia’s Shura Council, which advises the government on policy.
Saudi Arabia began cautious moves toward rapprochement after the appointment in August last year of Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi.
Senior members of the kingdom’s ruling Al Saud Dynasty had branded his predecessor, former Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki, a puppet of Iran, according to US embassy cables released by WikiLeaks, and accused him of ruling Iraq only on behalf of the Shiites.
Citing a Saudi Ministry of Foreign Affairs source, the Saudi Press Agency said that besides reopening its embassy, the kingdom planned to set up a general consulate in Erbil, capital of Iraq’s Kurdistan region.
A ministry team is to head to Baghdad this week to negotiate with Iraq on choosing and preparing buildings for both missions, so they could start work “at the earliest opportunity,” the agency said.
Mustafa Alani, an Iraqi security analyst with close ties to the Saudi government, said the move was prompted by both the change in Iraqi leadership and the threat from the Islamic State, which staged a lightning advance across Iraq in June and is the target of US-led airstrikes in both Iraq and Syria.
“The Saudis think there is a gap now. If they leave Mr Abadi without help, he will be forced to go to the Iranians,” he said. “With the change of leadership, change of circumstances, they think that it’s time to bring back Iraq ... to the Arab fold and to reduce the Iranian influence.”
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