The United States and Iran broke a 27-year diplomatic freeze
Monday with a four-hour meeting about Iraqi security. The American
envoy said there was broad policy agreement, but that Iran must
stop arming and financing militants who are attacking US and Iraqi
forces.
Iranian Ambassador Hassan Kazemi Qomi told The Associated Press
that the two sides would meet again in less than a month. US
Ambassador Ryan Crocker said Washington would decide only after the
Iraqi government issued an invitation.
"We don't have a formal invitation to respond to just yet, so it
doesn't make sense to respond to what we don't have," Crocker told
reporters after the meeting.
The talks in the Green Zone offices of Iraqi Prime Minister
Nouri al-Maliki were the first formal and scheduled meeting between
Iranian and American government officials since the United States
broke diplomatic relations with Tehran after the 1979 Islamic
Revolution and the seizure of the US Embassy.
An AP reporter who witnessed the opening of the session said
Crocker and Kazemi shook hands.
The American envoy called the meeting "businesslike" and said at
"the level of policy and principle, the Iranian position as
articulated by the Iranian ambassador was very close to our
own."
However, he said: "What we would obviously like to see, and the
Iraqis would clearly like to see, is an action by Iran on the
ground to bring what it's actually doing in line with its stated
policy."
Speaking later at a news conference in the Iranian Embassy,
Kazemi said: "We don't take the American accusations
seriously."
Crocker declined to detail what Kazemi had said in the session,
but the Iranian diplomat formerly a top official in the elite
Revolutionary Guards Quds Force said he had offered to train and
equip the Iraqi army and police to create "a new military and
security structure" for Iraq.
Kazemi said US efforts to rebuild those forces were inadequate
to handle the chaos in Iraq, for which he said Washington bore sole
responsibility. He said he also offered to provide what assistance
Iran could in rebuilding Iraq's infrastructure, which he said had
been "demolished by the American invaders."
The icebreaking session, according to both sides, did not veer
into other difficult issues that encumber the US-Iranian
relationship primarily Iran's nuclear program and the more than a
quarter-century history of diplomatic estrangement.
For its part, Iran's Shiite theocracy fears the Bush
administration harbors plans for regime change in Tehran and could
act on those desires as it did against Saddam Hussein in Iraq.
Washington and its Sunni Arab allies are deeply unnerved by
growing Iranian influence in the Middle East and the spread of
increasingly radical Islam.
Compounding all that is Iran's open hostility to Israel.
But the issues at hand in these first formal contacts portend a
bruising set of talks all other issues aside should the two sides
have follow-up meetings.
The Americans insist that Iran, specifically its Quds force, has
been bankrolling, arming and training Iraqi militants, particularly
the Mahdi Army militia of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada
al-Sadr.
Those men, who are deeply embedded in the Iraqi armed forces and
police, are believed to make up the Shiite death squads that have
pushed Baghdad into the violence and chaos that prompted the
US-Iraqi security crackdown, now in its fourth month.
Beyond that, Iran is charged with sending into Iraq the deadly
explosively formed penetrators, or EFPs, the armor piercing
roadside bombs that have killed hundreds of US soldiers. Mahdi Army
commanders have told AP that they receive those weapons from the
Revolutionary Guards and that many of the militia's foot soldiers
have gone to Iran for training with the elite military force.
Kazemi and Crocker said the Iranians did not raise the subject
of seven Iranians that were captured by the United States in Iraq.
Five are still in US custody.
"The focus of our discussions were Iraq and Iraq only," Crocker
said.
Just before 10:30 a.m., al-Maliki greeted the two ambassadors
and led them into a conference room, where they sat across a long,
glistening wood table from each other. Al-Maliki then made a brief
statement before leaving.
He told both sides that Iraqis wanted a stable country free of
foreign forces and regional interference. Iraq should not be turned
into a base for terrorist groups, he said, adding that the US-led
forces in Iraq were only here to help rebuild the army, police and
infrastructure.
The United States had no plans to launch a strike against Iran
from Iraq, he said.
"We are sure that securing progress in this meeting would,
without doubt, enhance the bridges of trust between the two
countries and create a positive atmosphere" that would help them
deal with other issues, he said.
After he left, the meeting moved to a second room where the
delegations sat at three long tables draped in white cloth and put
together in a triangular formation. National Security Adviser
Mowaffak al-Rubaie took charge of the Iraqi delegation.
In Tehran, Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said the
talks could lead to future meetings, but only if Washington
admitted that its Middle East policy had failed.
"We are hopeful that Washington's realistic approach to the
current issues of Iraq by confessing its failed policy in Iraq and
the region and by showing a determination to changing the policy
guarantees success of the talks and possible further talks,"
Mottaki said.
Crocker said he could not speculate whether future talks even if
they happened would be raised to a higher-level, perhaps that of
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Mottaki.
One reporter asked Crocker if he had a meal with Kazemi during a
break in the talks that ran over the lunch hour.
No, the veteran American Mideast hand said, a wry tone in his
voice. "We drank tea together."
(China Daily via AP May 29, 2007)
