Officials from regional states including Iran and Syria will
join US and British envoys at a meeting in Baghdad next month to
seek ways to stabilize Iraq, the Iraqi foreign minister said
Tuesday.
The mid-March meeting would be a chance for Western and regional
powers to try to bridge some of their differences over Iraq,
Foreign Minister Hoshiyar Zebari said.
"Our hope is that this will be an ice-breaking attempt for maybe
holding other meetings in the future. We want Iraq, instead of
being a divisive issue, to be a unifying issue," Zebari said by
telephone from Denmark where he is on a visit.
In December, the bipartisan US Iraq Study Group issued a report
on the Iraq War in which it recommended the United States hold
direct talks with Damascus and Teheran to persuade them to help
stem the violence in Iraq.
US President George W. Bush reacted coolly to that proposal.
Bush has not ruled out a regional conference to help Iraq,
involving Iran and Syria, but the White House has indicated Iraq
would have to set it up.
Iraq has been planning the March meeting for weeks, but until
Tuesday it had been expected to involve only officials from
countries bordering Iraq and other Muslim states.
The aim is to discuss ways Iraq's neighbors could help to halt
bloodshed that threatens to tear the country.
Zebari said the meeting would involve deputy foreign ministers
or senior officials from Iraq's neighbors.
Ambassadors from the five permanent members of the United
Nations who are based in Baghdad have confirmed they will take
part, he said. "Everybody agreed to attend after tough
negotiations," Zebari said.
(China Daily via agencies February 28, 2007)
