Saudi Arabia announced on Saturday that preparations are underway to reopen its embassy in Iraq, after its closure during the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990, Xinhua reported.
Saudi Arabia and Iraq have agreed to reopen the Saudi embassy in the Iraqi capital Baghdad, and set up the Saudi consulate general in Erbil, the largest city and capital of Iraq's semi-autonomous region of Kurdistan.
An official source at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that based on that deal, a technical committee will head to Baghdad this week to coordinate with the Iraqi Foreign Ministry in choosing and equipping the appropriate buildings for the two missions to start working as soon as possible, according to the Saudi Press Agency.
The step was taken following the visit of Iraqi President Fuad Masoum to Saudi Arabia in November 2014 for high-level talks between the two neighbors since years. The visit came after years of tension, especially during the administration of former Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, whom Saudi Arabia accused of promulgating sectarianism in Iraq.