| Iraq, Iran sign pact to resolve POW issue | |
| Iraq and Iran have signed a deal that Iraq says will resolve their longstanding dispute over prisoners of war . | |
| The agreement was reached following a week of talks in Baghdad between senior Iraqi officials and a visiting Iranian delegation headed by Abdullah al-Najafi, head of Iran's POW commission, the official Iraqi News Agency reported Wednesday. | |
| But the agency gave no further details and al-Najafi, who left Baghdad on Wednesday, declined to comment. | |
| Al-Najafi arrived in Baghdad last week with a list of thousands of Iranian POWs Tehran claims are still held by Iraq. | |
| Iraq has long maintained that it has released all Iranian prisoners and was reportedly angered by the new list. | |
| In April, Iran released 5,584 Iraqi POWs and Iraq freed three POWs and 316 Iranians it classified as civil law detainees. | |
| It was the largest repatriation of Iranian and Iraqi POWs since 1990, said the International Committee of the Red Cross , which supervised the swap. The Red Cross says it knows of several thousand Iraqis in Iran, but it is not aware of more Iranian POWs in Iraq. | |
| The Iran-Iraq war , in which more than more than 1 million people were killed or wounded, ended in 1988. | |
| The issue of POWs has long stood in the way of better ties. | |