Prague – The Foreign Minister of Iraq, Fuad Hussein, and the Czech Republic, Jan Lipavski, discussed yesterday, Friday, the repercussions of the war in Gaza and Lebanon, and the dangers of not encircling them.
This came during their meeting at the headquarters of the Czech Foreign Ministry in the capital, Prague, as part of a European tour of unannounced duration that Hussein is undertaking, including 4 countries, which began on Wednesday in Ireland, and also includes Croatia and France, according to a statement by the Iraqi Foreign Ministry.
The statement stated that Hussein and Lipavsky discussed “the current situation in the region, especially the repercussions of the (Israeli) war in Gaza and Lebanon, and the dangers of not encircling it and extinguishing the fire of war and its repercussions in the region.”
The two ministers stressed “the importance of intensifying international efforts, including the role of the Czech Republic as a member of the European Union, to prevent the conflict from expanding.”
The genocide committed by Israel, with American support, since October 7, 2023, has left more than 142,000 Palestinians dead and wounded, and more than 10,000 missing, amid massive destruction and famine that killed dozens of children and the elderly.
Tel Aviv continues its massacres, ignoring the UN Security Council resolution to end them immediately, and the orders of the International Court of Justice to take measures to prevent acts of genocide and improve the catastrophic humanitarian situation in Gaza.
In Lebanon, in parallel with the genocidal war on Gaza, Tel Aviv has expanded its aggression since last September 23, to include most of Lebanon’s regions, including the capital, Beirut, through air strikes, and also began a ground invasion in its south.
The aggression against Lebanon resulted in a total of 2,412 dead and 11,267 wounded, including a large number of women and children, in addition to more than 1,340,000 displaced people. Most of the victims and displaced persons were recorded since September 23, according to Anatolia’s monitoring of official Lebanese data until Thursday evening.
The meeting between the Iraqi minister and his Czech counterpart also touched on “ways to increase the volume of trade exchange between the two countries and invest in the supply of Iraqi oil to diversify oil exports towards European countries.” He urged the two Czech companies working in oil refining in Basra (southern Iraq) to expand their activities and study laying pipelines to transport oil within… And outside Iraq.”
“The importance of Czech companies’ openness to the Iraqi market and effective contribution to the development road project that extends to the continent of Europe via Türkiye” was also stressed.
The “Development Road” project consists of land roads and railways extending from Iraq to Turkey and its ports, with a length of 1,200 kilometers inside Iraq, and aims to transport goods between Europe and the Gulf countries, especially Qatar and the Emirates.
The meeting between the two ministers dealt with “security cooperation and the exchange of intelligence information, in light of the accumulated experience of the Iraqi security forces in fighting the terrorist organization ISIS.”
According to the statement, Hussein called on the Czech government “to urge European Union countries to withdraw their nationals detained in Al-Hawl camp, warning that “the presence of these groups in the camp constitutes a fertile environment for the growth of extremism and terrorism,” according to the same statement.
Al-Hawl camp, which is controlled by the YPG terrorist organization in Syria, includes thousands of displaced families, most of whom are families of ISIS members who fled Iraq after 2017 following the recapture of Mosul and other areas from the control of the organization’s militants.
Popular circles reject the return of the families of ISIS members involved in participating in the killing of civilians in the governorates of Nineveh, Salah al-Din, Kirkuk, and Anbar in Iraq during the organization’s control of those areas between 2014-2017.
The two sides also discussed “military cooperation and the exchange of security experiences, especially since the Czech Republic was supportive of Iraq through military advisors within the international coalition,” according to the statement.
On September 27, Washington and Baghdad issued a joint statement in which they announced their agreement to set a timetable for ending the international coalition’s mission in Iraq, to be within 12 months from its date, and no later than the end of September 2025.
The United States currently has about 2,500 soldiers in Iraq, and the international coalition, led by Washington, includes other countries such as France and Spain, and was established in 2014 to combat the ISIS terrorist organization, which controlled large areas of Iraq and Syria.
Hussein called for “strengthening cultural and scientific cooperation and increasing opportunities for granting scholarships in Czech universities, from which many Iraqi students graduated in previous decades.”
They also discussed “cooperation in the field of water management, combating desertification and pollution, and waste recycling, to confront the environmental challenges that Iraq suffers from.”
Anatolia
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