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US Joins Foes at Baghdad Peace Huddle |
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Saturday, 10 March 2007Envoys of the United States and its arch foes Iran and Syria are due to sit at the same table for the first time on Saturday at a peace conference in Baghdad called by Iraq's prime minister.
The meeting brings together representatives of world and regional powers and is aimed at quelling the sectarian violence tearing Iraq apart.
Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki hopes to persuade Iraq's neighbours -- including Iran and Syria -- to cut off support for the country's warring factions and the UN Security Council to do more to support the peace process.
"We will ask all neighbouring countries to stop interfering in Iraqi affairs and to put pressure on the armed groups with whom they have links to end the violence," Maliki adviser Sami al-Askari told AFP last week.
US commanders accuse Iranian agents of smuggling weapons to Shiite militias in Iraq, including components for lethal roadside bombs that have been blamed for the deaths of at least 170 American soldiers since May 2004.
They also accuse Syria of allowing Sunni Arab extremists to cross its borders to join Al-Qaeda-linked groups fighting in Iraq.
Officials of Iraq's Shiite-led government in turn accuse Saudi figures of funding Sunni insurgent groups.
Pro-Western regional governments Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Turkey will also join the meeting.
All five veto-wielding permanent members of the UN Security Council -- Britain, China, France and Russia, as well as the United States -- have also been invited alongside the Arab League and the Organisation of the Islamic Conference.
The conference marks a shift in policy for the United States, as President George W. Bush has steadfastly refused to deal directly with Iran and Syria, arguing any US approach would lead Tehran to seek concessions in an unrelated dispute with the West over its suspected nuclear weapons programme, and would encourage Damascus' efforts to reassert control over Lebanon.
But with the options running out for avoiding a full-scale civil war in Iraq and under pressure to pull US troops out of the country from opposition Democrats now in control of the US Congress, Bush authorised the face-to-face meetings.
While US officials have said they will use the meeting to confront Tehran and Damascus directly with accusations of actively fomenting the violence, they have also raised the possibility of direct talks.
"If we judge that a bilateral meeting (with Iran) would be useful ... we would be willing to do that," outgoing US Ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad said Friday.
But David Satterfield, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's top adviser on Iraq, has refused to say whether the Americans would actively seek contacts with the two adversaries on the meeting's sidelines.
"We will see how this conference unfolds," he said. "What the Iranians and the Syrians choose to do is also part and parcel of this."
Bush said Friday he hopes the two countries will support the Iraqi government and warned them against stirring unrest in the country.
"Our message to the Syrians and Iranians won't change at that meeting ... which is, we expect you to help this young democracy and we will defend ourselves and the people in Iraq from weapons being shipped," Bush said in Brazil on the first stop of his Latin American tour.
When he drew up the guest list, Maliki hoped one of the spin-offs would be a meeting between the United States and Iran, which have not had no diplomatic relations with Iran since 1980.
"I think that this conference could be the opportunity for Tehran and Washington to meet privately on the sidelines," his adviser Askari said.
The prime minister has loftily pitched the meeting as an opportunity to forge international "agreement and harmony."
"The conference will help heal Iraq and be a base for regional dialogue," he said. "Iraq will connect with its neighbours and the world community. The meeting will end in international agreement and harmony."
Satterfield's ambitions for the meeting were far more limited. He said it was a preparatory discussion for a ministerial-level conference of Iraq's neighbours to be attended by Rice and enlarged to include the Group of Eight industrialised states in April.
10.03.2007
Bakutoday.net |
Saturday, 10 March 2007
US and the Middle East
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