Friday, June 05, 2009 BAGHDAD: Iraq and Afghanistan are planning to resume diplomatic relations "very soon", 12 years after they were severed during the days of Saddam Hussein and the Taliban, a senior Afghan diplomat said."We sent a message from our chief diplomat to his Iraqi counterpart about the resumption of diplomatic relations between our two countries and the reopening of our embassies in Kabul and Baghdad," Fazler Rahman Fazil, a senior Afghan consular official, told late on Thursday."We have been received very well here, and we will discuss it when we return (to Kabul), and take a joint decision very soon," said Abdul Raqeeb Salim, a senior official in the Afghan foreign ministry's Arab countries division.The Afghan embassy in Baghdad, in the western Amariyah district, is currently in poor condition and is in need of a great deal of renovation.
BAGHDAD: Nearly 500 U.S. Army combat engineers who specialize in clearing roads of explosives started shifting to southern Afghanistan."We are probably going to be the beginning of the influx you are going to see to Afghanistan," Lt. Col. Kevin Landers, commander of the Fort Carson, Colo.-based 4th Engineer Battalion, said as crews packed crates and cleaned vehicles for the flight to Kandahar.Obama has ordered 17,000 more U.S. soldiers and Marines to Afghanistan to bolster the 38,000 American troops already battling the resurgent Taliban."We are going to take this footprint out of Iraq," said Landers, whose battalion received word of its reassignment last month just after taking command of clearing roads in Baghdad of bombs and debris.
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