Lufthansa Wants to Begin Service to Baghdad

The German air carrier Lufthansa has announced it wants to start a direct route between Frankfurt and Baghdad as soon as the security situation in Iraq stabilizes. The airline wants to "become Iraq's link with the rest of the world," Thierry Antinori, Lufthansa's vice president for marketing and sales, announced on Wednesday evening in Cairo. The company already offers five flights a week to Kuwait, from where many passengers continue on to Iraq. Besides business travellers, U.S. soldiers are frequently booked on those flights. Lufthansa had applied to fly to Baghdad back in May after military hostilities had ended, but after the security situation on the ground continued to deteriorate and American aircraft began receiving fire, U.S. authorities suspended the application procedure.