With new US planes slow to arrive, Iraq seeks remnants of Saddam's air force to bomb ISIL

Frustrated with the pace of US deliveries of jets and attack helicopters, the Iraqi government has resorted to negotiating the return of decades-old planes from Iran to use against insurgents.

Iran has been receptive to the demands and is working on refurbishing an unspecified number of jets, Ammar Toma, a member of the Iraqi parliament's defence and security committee, said on Friday.

Government and military officials and two other lawmakers confirmed the negotiations.

The planes are among more than 100 Iraqi jets, including Soviet-made Sukhoi bombers and MiGs, that were flown to Iran by fleeing Iraqi pilots during the 1991 Gulf war. If delivered, they would join second-hand fighters from Belarus and Russia to create a ragtag air force that Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is hoping can help reverse insurgent gains.

Iraq is desperate for air power to strike militants from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as Isis) and has expressed annoyance that long-awaited US contracts for F-16 fighters and Apache helicopters are yet to be fulfilled.

"If we had air support, none of this would have happened," Maliki complained in a BBC interview on Thursday. He said Iraq was deluded when it signed contracts with the United States, and that second-hand planes from Russia and Belarus should arrive in the next few days.

But with the United States holding back on air strikes and no jets of its own, Iraq has been forced to rely on fixed-wing propeller planes and helicopters armed with US-supplied Hellfire missiles for aerial attacks.