TEHRAN – Iran’s Cultural Heritage, Handicrafts and Tourism Organization has expressed readiness to work with Iraqi officials in order to restore once-owned historical sites now located in the neighboring country.

“Iran is prepared to provide technical, security and conservational services for [Elamite-era archaeological] sites of Soleiman Tappeh and … that are now located in Iraq due to a border change occurred before [the 1979] Islamic Revolution,” Mehr quoted Abdolmalek Shanbezadeh, Ilam province’s CHHTO chief, as saying on Saturday.

The official noted there is no exact information about the fates of these sites, adding the organization has already raised the issue with some Iraqi provincial officials.

Years before a full-scale war that took some eight years, Iran and Iraq settled their border disputes and conflicts such as the one about Shatt al-Arab (known as Arvand Rud in Iran) through the 1975 Algiers Agreement, which served as a basis for several subsequent bilateral treaties.

Elam was an ancient pre-Iranian civilization centered in the far-west and south-west of what is now modern-day Iran, stretching from the lowlands of what is now Khuzestan and Ilam provinces as well as a small part of southern Iraq.

PHOTO: A file photo shows reconstructed facade of the Neo-Sumerian Ziggurat of Ur, near Nasiriyah, Iraq

AFM/MQ/MG