Iran, Iraq spend over $1bln to combat sandstorms

A top Iranian environment official announced that Tehran and Baghdad will jointly pay $1.2 billion in a project to reduce the number of sand dunes in a bid to cut the number of sandstorms from Iraq.\"In order to reduce gravel levels we have signed an agreement with a foreign company worth $1.2 billion to cover a million hectares (2.47 million acres) of Iraqi soil in the next five years,\" the head of Iran\'s Environmental Protection Organization said. \"This initiative began with 500 hectares and in our negotiations (with Iraq) it was decided to either use fossil materials (petroleum products) or biological ones to stabilize the dunes,\" Mohammad Javad Mohammadi-Zadeh added. Local officials have blamed sandstorms on countries West of the Islamic Republic, particularly Iraq which has been hit by desertification and deforestation because of dam construction and declining agriculture. In mid-April, 20 of Iran\'s 31 provinces had to close schools and government offices, and flights to and from some Western cities were cancelled because of sandstorms mostly originating in neighboring Iraq. The problem of sandstorms from Iraq has been blamed on two decades of on-off wars, with officials there saying the number of palm trees has fallen by two thirds from around 36 million to just 12 million. In September 2010, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Qatar and Turkey signed an accord in Tehran aimed at tackling the sandstorms problem over the next five years. Meantime, Head of Iran\'s Meteorological Organization Bahram Sanae\'i took the occupying forces in Iraq responsible for the recent hike in the Arabian dust haze infiltrating Iran through its Western borders. \"One of the reasons for increasing the amount of dust in Iran is the presence of the occupying forces in Iraq which has destroyed the agriculture and has dried the tidal flats,\" Sanae\'i told FNA on Saturday. He reiterated that the deployment of the US forces in Iraq has hampered Iraqis\' natural and everyday life and bombardment of different parts of the country by the US warplanes returned those parts of the earth which were flattened to their primary dusty shape. Sanae\'i said that the US forces in Iraq have also hindered the trend of sustainable development in the country. A global survey by the World Health Organization showed that a city in Southwestern Iran close to the border with Iraq ranks amongst the worst on the planet for air pollution, while those in the US and Canada are among the best. The Southwestern Iranian city of Ahwaz, a frontline victim of sandstorms from Iraq, walked away with the unfortunate distinction of having the highest measured level of airborne particles smaller than 10 micrometers, the study said. The city, with a population of about 1.2m people, had the highest count of small airborne particles out of 1,100 urban areas around the world. These particles can cause asthma, heart disease and lung cancer, and the problem in Iran is made worse by dust storms.