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Iraq, Syria to form border security committee

DAMASCUS: Syria and Iraq will form a committee to improve security along their long desert border, which Washington says anti-US insurgents use to infiltrate Iraq, the countries’ prime ministers said on Saturday. After a series of meetings in Damascus, Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi said the two countries had agreed to look at how to better control the 600-km (375-mile) frontier, which Washington and Baghdad see as a serious source of instability in Iraq.

“We have ... formed a joint committee to look at these issues (border and security) in detail in the future, in the weeks ahead,” Allawi told a news conference.

“Syria has seen terrorism in earlier days, even by the old regime in Iraq when Saddam tried to inflict a lot of damage on the Syrian people and kill a lot of Syrian civilians. Now it’s time for us to close ranks.”

US officials have repeatedly accused Syria of failing to do enough to keep anti-US militants from crossing into Iraq, though the US military acknowledges that foreign fighters account for few of the guerrilla suspects it has detained.

“We do not only say that we deny, but moreover we oppose any infiltration that takes place from Syria to Iraq as we do oppose any infiltration from Iraq to Syria,” Syrian Prime Minister Naji al-Otari said.

“We have affirmed during the meeting the keenness of Syria under the leadership of President Bashar al-Assad to achieve security and stability in Iraq and Syria’s support to the efforts that aim at achieving that.”

Allawi’s interim government won a pledge of support on border security from Jordan on the first stage of his regional tour. reuters

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