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| Iraq |
| Bahrain names ambassador to Baghdad |
| 2008-09-01 |
| Bahrain's King Hamad on Sunday named career diplomat Salah al-Maliki as the Gulf state's ambassador to Iraq, and the envoy said he expected to go to Baghdad soon. The Bahraini monarch issued a decree appointing Maliki head of the Bahraini diplomatic mission in Iraq with ambassador rank, the official BNA news agency reported. Maliki, 34, told AFP he expected to go to Iraq immediately after taking the oath before King Hamad. "This will not take longer than a week," he said, adding that he expected to be stationed in Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone compound which houses government offices and the U.S. embassy. The nomination of Maliki, who has served at the United Nations in New York, was reported by Bahraini newspapers in early July, but his appointment only became official on Sunday. Bahrain is among a string of Sunni-ruled Arab states to announce that they are sending ambassadors to Baghdad amid pressure from Washington to upgrade relations with Iraq's Shiite-led government as a counterweight to Shiite Iran. Kuwait, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates have all recently named ambassadors. But at present no Arab ambassador is actually in his post in Baghdad because of the lack of security. Bahrain's charge d'affaires Hassan an-Ansari was repatriated after he was wounded in July 2005 when gunmen tried to kidnap him in the Iraqi capital. |
| Posted by:Fred |