Iraq To Receive Boeing Planes, Rebuild Commercial Aviation

Iraq will start receiving 40 Boeing commercial airplanes, as the first step in re-establishing the country's scheduled commercial aviation operations, an official Iraqi television reported Thursday.

"The Iraqi Ministry of Transportation will begin receiving batches of the 40 American Boeing 738, 787 airplanes in December this year," the state-run Iraqia channel quoted Kareem al-Nuri, an advisor to the minister of transportation, as saying.

The ministry has also received six planes out of 10 that were part of an earlier contract with Canada's Bombardier company in a bid to rebuild the country's aged air fleet, al-Nuri said, adding that the remaining four planes will be delivered to Iraq in the coming months.

In 2008, Iraq signed two deals -- one worth 5 billion U.S. dollars to purchase 40 Boeing aircraft, and the other with the Canada's Bombardier to purchase 10 planes.

The Iraqi Airways is one of the oldest airlines in the Middle East and a member of the Arab Union for air transportation.

Last month, Baghdad announced that it has reached a deal with Kuwait to resolve the decades-old debts deadlock -- an issue of 1. 2 billion-dollar reparations imposed on Iraq since Saddam Hussein' s invasion to Kuwait in 1990.

In mid-March, Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki visited Kuwait and met with its leaders, when the two sides reached a 500 million dollars agreement to resolve the stand-off over war reparations that had prevented Iraqi Airways from flying to destinations in the West.

Under the deal, Iraq will pay Kuwait 300 million dollars in cash and invest another 200 million dollars in a joint Iraqi- Kuwaiti airline venture. In return, Kuwait will lift legal actions against Iraqi Airways.

Copyright 2012 Xinhua News Agency