Jordan is ready to return six Iraqi planes grounded in the kingdom since the Gulf war back to Baghdad but they need maintenance work first, Information Minister Taleb Rifai said Friday.
"The government is not opposed to returning the Iraqi civilian planes that have been on Jordanian soil since almost 10 years," Rifai said in a statement to Al Arab Al Yawm newspaper.
"If there are any objections, they are purely for technical reasons," Rifai said.
A technical official at the civil aviation authority told the newspaper that the six planes are in dire need of maintenance and unfit to fly.
"Most of them need new engines and technical adjustments ... costing around 14 million dollars," the unnamed official told Al Arab Al Yawm.
In a statement to Al-Dustour newspaper Rifai said Jordan and Iraq should agree on "technical arrangements to guarantee the return of the planes" to Baghdad.
The Iraqi newspaper Al-Zawra on Thursday quoted an unidentified official at the Baghdad transport ministry saying "the six planes taken to Jordan in 1991 will soon join Iraq's air fleet".
The planes -- four Boeing 727s and two Boeing 707s -- were flown to Jordan for protection on the eve of the 1991 Gulf war.
According to the Iraqi official, the planes will be used to transport Iraqi Muslims to Saudi Arabia during the pilgrimage season, which starts early next year.
Jordan's civil aviation chief Jihad Rsheid said in May that any decision to return the planes to Iraq, repair them in Jordan or elsewhere should be taken at the political level.
He was reacting at the time to reports that the planes could be sent to the United Arab Emirates for repairs.
Iraqi Airways, which was grounded in 1990, dispatched a fleet of some 30 planes to Iran, Jordan, Libya and Tunisia for safety.
The national carrier began on November 5 domestic flights through the US and British controlled "no-fly zones" to the southern port of Basra and the northern city of Mosul.
Baghdad's Saddam International Airport reopened in mid-August to a plethora of solidarity flights from Russia, France and Arab countries – AMMAN (AFP)
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