TEHRAN, Nov 6: The first Iraqi passenger flight for 25 years landed in Tehran on Sunday, an Iranian aviation official said. The Iraqi Airways Boeing 737 is the latest harbinger of rapprochement between the neighbours who fought a war of attrition from 1980 to 1988 which killed hundreds of thousands of people on both sides.

Iraqi Airways is planning to fly scheduled flights to Iran on Wednesdays and Fridays from Nov. 16, said Reza Jafarzadeh, spokesman for Iran’s Civil Aviation Authority.

Sunday’s flight carried journalists and politicians rather than fare-paying passengers and was intended as an advertisement for the forthcoming scheduled flights, Iraqi airline sources said.

Jafarzadeh said Iran was still too wary about security to fly into Iraq.

“If they give us a security guarantee we would have no problem resuming flights to Iraq,” he told Reuters.