ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Two members of the Swedish parliament have drafted a motion to resume flights between Stockholm and the Kurdistan Region that have been halted for over eight years, the Kurdistan Regional Government’s (KRG) representative in Sweden said on Friday.
“The latest report of the [European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA)] agency mentions fears about some militias. These militias are not in the Kurdistan Region, so we have asked the Swedish parties, the Swedish government, the Swedish parliament to make a new assessment of the report,” Shorsh Qadir Rahim told Rudaw in an interview.
He said two members of the parliament have taken on the cause and submitted a motion to parliament to resume direct flights.
According to the motion, flights from Erbil and Sulaimani to Sweden have been suspended since 2017 when they were stopped during the war against the Islamic State (ISIS) after the Swedish government decided that there were security risks for direct flights over Iraq and the Kurdistan Region.
Serkan Kose and Ola Moller are the two MPs backing the motion. Kose is a Kurd who has supported Kurdish issues in the Swedish parliament for many years. Moller is the head of the Sweden-Kurdistan Network in the parliament.
The two MPs ask in their motion for Sweden to conduct a new safety assessment, saying direct flights would benefit the country’s large Kurdish population.
Rahim said he has been working on this file for years, including contacting the Swedish Transport Agency, the government and the parliament. He predicted that the parliament could make a decision within two to six months.
He said that the resumption of direct flights will be very useful for the Kurdistan Region and Sweden, which is home to more than 150,000 Kurds.
Iraq’s Interior Minister Abdul-Amir al-Shammari was in Stockholm on Friday where he signed a memorandum of understanding with Swedish Justice Minister Gunnar Strommer, agreeing to cooperate in fighting organized crime as the two nations work to mend ties that were severed two years ago after an Iraqi refugee in Sweden burned a copy of the Quran.
Shammari urged the Swedish government to reopen their embassy in Baghdad.
Hemin Abdullah contributed to this report.