- TEHRAN (Reuters) - Another
apparently stray missile has landed in Iran, government sources said on
Wednesday, but an analyst said the country was unlikely to lose its neutrality
on war in neighboring Iraq.
-
- The rocket landed on Monday night near the city of Qasr-e
Shirin, in western Kermanshah province. There were no reports of damage
and it was not clear who had fired the rocket, the sources said.
-
- Torn between its enmity for both protagonists in the
war, the Islamic Republic has vowed neutrality in the conflict. It has
also said such errant missile incidents were not uncommon next to a war
zone.
-
- "I don't think Iran will lose its patience and answer
back. Until now they have behaved very well," political analyst Saeed
Leylaz said.
-
- The neighbors, both labeled members of "an axis
of evil" by Washington last year, fought each other to a standstill
in their 1980-1988 war that killed around one million people.
-
- Since U.S.-led forces started the campaign to topple
the rule of President Saddam Hussein have accused both U.S. forces and
Iraq of firing missiles that have errantly landed in Iran.
-
- Washington has said it was investigating the reports.
-
- The most serious incident to date occurred on Friday
when a missile smashed into an oil refinery in the southwest city of Abadan
and injured two workers.
-
- In the first reported anti-war protest in Iran since
war started, about 300 people demonstrated outside the main U.N. building
in central Tehran on Wednesday, witnesses and state television said.
-
- "Why does America kill innocent Iraqi people for
the sake of oil?" asked one demonstrator.
-
- "We don't support Saddam, we back each single Muslim
in Iraq," said another.
-
- Television footage showed some protesters were family
members of Iranians who died during the brutal Iran-Iraq war and also disabled
combatants from that conflict.
-
- In another consequence of war, negotiations between Iran
and Iraq on swapping the remains of soldiers killed in the war have been
put on hold, the official IRNA news agency said.
-
- The fate of thousands of combatants listed as missing
in action remains a source of tension between the two countries. Iraq denies
having Iranian war prisoners.
-
- "Iraqi authorities announced they are not ready
to negotiate and cooperate with Iran regarding exchanging the remains of
whose were killed during Iran-Iraq war," IRNA said, quoting an unnamed
official.
-
- Iranian and Iraqi teams combing former war zones have
found thousands of bodies since a U.N.-sponsored cease-fire halted the
war and last year the International Committee for the Red Cross supervised
the repatriation of over 97,400 POWs from both sides.
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