Lebanese industrialists hope that an international food fair opening in Iraq on Tuesday will provide further momentum for a free-trade agreement between the two countries, The Daily Star reported.
Six Lebanese exhibitors are participating at the fair in Baghdad, which will feature 85 companies from 13 Arab and European countries and ends March 27th, the daily said, noting that the fair comes about one week after the Iraqi embassy reopened in Beirut as a precursor to upgrading ties to ambassadorial level.
Fares Saad, owner of the Industrial Marketing Company that led the first Lebanese industrial delegation to Iraq in 1997 was quoted by the paper as saying that “the government has lifted all political hurdles to signing an agreement, noting that “it has (now) no excuse for not forging ahead and signing a free-trade agreement with Iraq.
“Economy and Trade Minister Basil Fuleihan is currently preparing the documents for a free-trade agreement.”
He said that “I think it is a matter of weeks before the government decides on a course of action.”
Although the Gulf War and UN sanctions harmed relations with Iraq, the Lebanese government did not officially break ties with Baghdad until the 1994 assassination of a senior Iraqi opposition leader in Beirut.
The ties were restored in 1998, when the government sent Elias Numnum to handle administrative affairs in Iraq for a three-month period.
A free-trade agreement with Iraq would scrap tariffs on Lebanese goods that currently go as high as 200 percent and allow around 1,000 Lebanese firms that produce such goods to compete in the Iraqi market
Industrialists, according to the paper, have long blamed political pressure from abroad for keeping Lebanon from restoring full diplomatic ties and signing deals with Iraq, its former number one trading partner.
“The United Nations and the US did not allow Lebanon to tap $10 million in oil gifts given to Lebanon,” Iraqi Trade Minister Mohammed Mahdi Saleh said recently – Albawaba.com
