Iraq and Serbia maintain diplomatic relations established between Iraq and SFR Yugoslavia in 1958.
Yugoslavia established a large engineering and technology presence in Iraq soon after Saddam Hussein came to power.[1] [2] Upon the 2003 Iraq invasion, Western military analysts referred to maps and advice from former engineers of the now-defunct[3] Serbian company Aeroinženjering, which had built Saddam Hussein's underground bunkers along with many airports in Iraq by the 1980s.[4]
Later on, in the 1990s when FR Yugoslavia was isolated by international sanctions, Serbian company Yugoimport SDPR designed and built Ba'ath party headquarters in Baghdad along with an additional five underground bunkers for Saddam Hussein; Yugoimport SDPR's blueprints of the bunkers in which Saddam and loyalists hid during the United States invasion merited enough importance that they were handed over to the United States when the invasion began.[5]
A rumor was speculated by the media in 1999 during the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia that Yugoslav president Slobodan Milošević and Saddam Hussein allegedly negotiated a discreet military alliance that would improve their ability to defy the West and withstand Allied bombing attacks, along with low-profile support from Russia and China.[6]
See main article: Boka Star. In 2002, a Yugoslav ship Boka Star, owned by a Montenegrin named Marko Balić was seized by the United States Navy after it was tipped off to have a large weapons shipment to Iraq. Serbia and Montenegro was one of the only countries in the world to have continued military shipments to Iraq during sanctions against Iraq and the Hussein regime.[7] The shipment was attempted just a year before the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
In 2010, Serbian foreign Minister Vuk Jeremić said after talks with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki that Serbia and Iraq share a common stance on international law and issues of territorial integrity and sovereignty.[8]
In 2008, Serbia signed a $235 million-dollar deal to export weapons and military equipment to Iraq.[9] The deal included the delivery of 20 Utva Lasta aircraft to the Iraqi Air Force,[10] all of which were delivered by early 2012.[11]