US, Iran to hold breakthrough meeting on Iraq

by Jitendra Joshi

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The United States and Iran plan to hold landmark talks to thrash out security in war-torn Iraq, but will steer clear of the Islamic republic's nuclear ambitions, officials said Sunday.


The talks "in the next few weeks" are likely to involve Ryan Crocker, the US ambassador to Baghdad, and an Iranian delegation, National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe said.

President George W. Bush had authorized the dialogue "because we must take every step possible to stabilize Iraq and reduce the risk to our troops, even as our military continue to act against hostile Iranian-backed activity in Iraq," Johndroe said.

The engagement between the two arch-foes should "not be seen as a particular moment but as part of an ongoing process to get Iran to play a constructive role in Iraq," Johndroe added.

Washington said the talks will not address Western suspicions that Iran is covertly trying to build nuclear weapons, as the US government and its European allies mount pressure on Tehran to renounce uranium enrichment.

"There are other places for a discussion on the nuclear issue, and we've been clear what needs to take place for that," State Department spokeswoman Leslie Phillips said.

Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini said Sunday Tehran had agreed to a US request for the talks on Iraq, not long after the nations failed to have substantive contacts at a conference in Egypt.

"Iran has agreed to talk to the US side over Iraq, in Iraq, in order to relieve the pain of the Iraqi people, to support the government and to reinforce security in Iraq," he said, according to the state-run IRNA agency.

Details include a date for the talks would be made public this week, he said. Iran's Mehr news agency said they would take place in Baghdad.

With the Democrats back in control of Congress, the Bush administration has been under pressure to revive engagement with Iran as part of a far-reaching policy overhaul to allow US troops to start leaving neighboring Iraq.

The Iraq Study Group, a 10-member panel of Washington grandees co-chaired by former secretary of state James Baker, said in a December report that the administration should engage both Iran and
Syria "constructively."

But in a sign that almost three decades of enmity between the United States and Iran remains intact, Vice President Dick Cheney on Friday issued a stark warning from the deck of a US aircraft carrier in the Gulf.

"We'll stand with others to prevent Iran from gaining nuclear weapons and dominating this region," he said aboard the USS John C. Stennis as it cruised roughly 240 kilometers (150 miles) from Iran.

Just over a week ago, hopes were dashed that Iran and the United States would hold substantive contacts at the conference on Iraq's security in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh.

At that meeting, Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki barely exchanged pleasantries with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice while a lower-level encounter on May 4 between high-ranking diplomats lasted just minutes.

US-Iranian relations have been frozen since 1980, after radical students stormed the US embassy in Tehran in the wake of the country's Islamic revolution and held 52 diplomats hostage for 444 days.

Washington today accuses Iran of aiding Shiite militia groups and attacking US soldiers in Iraq, charges vehemently denied by Tehran. Tensions have intensified over the arrest by the United States of seven Iranians inside Iraq.

But after the Sharm el-Sheikh conference, Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari predicted that Iran and the United States would have to acknowledge each other's importance in his shattered country.

Senator Chuck Hagel (news, bio, voting record), one of the leading Republican dissidents against Bush's Iraq policy, said Sunday "Iran has to be part" of any regional deal on Iraq.

"Iran is not going to do us any favors, but it's in their interest to find some common denominators here," he told CBS television.

Senate Republican minority leader Mitch McConnell (news, bio, voting record) said he did not see "anything wrong" with holding talks with Iran over Iraq's security.

"I think the Iranians are part of the problem in Iraq," he told CNN. "To the extent that they want to discuss discontinuing that kind of mischievous b