Shafaq News / The Iraqi President, Barham Salih said that he was working with his legal team to "cancel" the suspension of Reuters operating license and return it to work in Iraq.

On April 2, Reuters was suspended for three months after a story that reported larger-than-reported infections with Corona virus.

Saleh described the decision as "unfortunate" and said it was taken by the country's Communications and Media Commission, "independent of the government."

He said during an interview with Christian Amanpour, a prominent introduction to CNN, that reporting Covid 19 cases and deaths "should be based on transparency and openness."

Saleh said officials were upset by Reuters because the report "implied deliberate forgery of records by the government." The president cited reports from the World Health Organization and the United Nations "confirming that there was absolutely no evidence of deliberate forgery of records."

He also said that the inconsistency in the numbers "is the norm in Iraq as well as in other countries because we were not in a state of active monitoring at an early date."

Reuters news agency said it regretted the decision to suspend its work in Iraq, and that it is still committed to the story, which it described as "based on multiple medical and political sources."

The story published by Reuters office in Baghdad says that Iraq has thousands of confirmed cases of Covid-19, which is much more than the reported.

On Tuesday, Saleh met with medical staff and praised their efforts to fight the virus, adding that "the battle is not over, and we have many challenges ahead of us, and the final victory over the epidemic has not been achieved yet."