Iraq requests Saudi ambassador be changed

Iraq officially asks Saudi Arabia to recall its ambassador to Baghdad after the envoy allegedly told media outlets of a plot by Iran-backed Iraqi groups to assassinate him.

“The Iraqi foreign ministry has sent an official request to the Saudi foreign ministry to replace its ambassador to Iraq,” ministry spokesman Ahmad Jamal says in a statement.

“Several statements and opinions voiced in the media overstepped the boundaries of diplomatic protocol and of an ambassador’s duties,” he says.

Thamer al-Sabhan, whose credentials were received in January 2016, became the first Saudi ambassador to Iraq in a quarter century, after relations were cut following ex-president Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait.

— AP