Iran and Iraq Presidents Visit Troops as Truce Holds

MANAMA, Bahrain — The presidents of Iran and Iraq visited troops along the battlefront as an unofficial truce held for a seventh day Sunday and an advance team of a U.N. observer force began surveying the border.

Iran’s official Tehran Radio said that President Ali Khamenei toured the southern sector of the war front with Iraq and warned Iranian soldiers of “the need to stay alert.”

Iraqi President Saddam Hussein visited his troops in Diyala province in the central sector of the front and unexpectedly dropped by villages in the area, officials in Baghdad said.

Western diplomats said that members of the U.N. force who arrived in Baghdad last week split up to visit different areas of the roughly 700-mile border stretching from a river estuary in the south to rugged mountains in the north.

The Persian Gulf-based diplomats said that about a dozen blue-helmeted troops from Canada’s 88th Signals Squadron are scheduled to arrive in Baghdad today as the first of nearly 500 Canadians who will prepare for the arrival of the 350-member U.N. Iran-Iraq Military Observer Group.

The U.N. force created to monitor a cease-fire to take effect on Aug. 20 is scheduled to take up positions between the Iranian and Iraqi forces by Wednesday, three days before the formal truce.