U.S. Eases Up On No-Fly Rule For Iraq

The United States backed away Tuesday from strictly enforcing the U.S.-patrolled “no-fly zone” over Iraq, allowing the Baghdad government to send civilian helicopters to pick up Iraqis returning from an Islamic pilgrimage to neighboring Saudi Arabia.

“Our preference is that there be no flights,” but “we are not prepared to stop what appear to be small-scale and humanitarian operations,” Defense Department spokesman Kenneth Bacon said.

At least nine Russian-made Iraqi helicopters flew from Baghdad Tuesday to near the Saudi-Iraqi border, crossing the southern portion of the no-fly zone imposed by the United States and its allies after Iraq’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait, wire services reported.

Two of the helicopters carried the news media to the border at Arar, and journalists saw the other seven parked about two miles from the Saudi border.

They were waiting to transport up to 70 sick and elderly Iraqi pilgrims returning from a pilgrimage to Mecca, Islam’s holiest site.