Baghdad trade show moved to Turkey’s southeast

A protocol detailing the trade show was inked by Omar Radd, the head of the Iraqi-American Chamber of Commerce and Industry (IACCI), and by Kutbettin Arzu, the head of the Diyarbakir Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the Anatolia news agency said Sunday.

Radd told a news conference that the much-anticipated fair would go ahead in Diyarbakir, the regional capital of Turkey’s mainly Kurdish southeast, in late May.

"We will hold the fair on May 25-27. We have no problems regarding security," Radd was quoted by Anatolia as saying.

The Destination Baghdad Expo fair was originally set to open in April, but IACCI later announced that it had postponed the event after reviewing the overall security situation with coalition officials.

The postponement followed a travel warning by the United States that it could not guarantee the security of US citizens at the trade fair.

The Baghdad fair was supposed to be the first of its kind to be held in the war-wrecked Iraqi capital since the end of the war last year.

Radd said they had considered holding the event in the northern Kurdish Iraqi city of Suleimaniya and had also evaluated proposals by some of Iraq’s other neighbours to host the event.

"But we chose Diyarbakir to promote good ties. More than 200 companies will participate in the fair. We have more than 3,000 active members. We want to bring them all to Diyarbakir," Radd said.

He added that he would go to the United States on Monday to explain to IACCI members the reason for moving the fair to Diyarbakir, and said that a 30-member organisation team from Iraq would come to Diyarbakir soon to work with Turkish organisers to realize the event.

The fair’s sponsors have said they had signed up a number of major commercial sponsors to back the expo including GE, Motorola, Orascom, GM, Parsons, Mercedes, DHL, Siemens, SAIC, Computer Associates and KBR.

Thousands of Iraqi companies had also registered to attend amid efforts to rebuild Iraq.