Iran will attend a conference of key powers including the United
States this week that will focus on stabilizing Iraq, a meeting
Baghdad said might be a turning point for regional cooperation in
easing the violence.
Iraq's Foreign Minister Hoshiyar Zebari said there was a "high
possibility" that arch foes Teheran and Washington would hold
bilateral talks at the May 3-4 conference in Egypt's Sharm-El
Sheikh.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said in television
interviews that she would not rule out an "encounter" with Iranian
Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki at the conference.
However, Rice said any discussions would center only on
stabilizing Iraq and not broader US-Iranian relations.
Teheran said it would send a delegation headed by Mottaki "with
the aim of helping the Iraqi nation and government".
US officials accuse Shi'ite Iran of training and supplying
weapons to Shi'ite militias in Iraq, a charge Teheran denies.
Relations between Iraq and Iran, both predominantly Sh'ite
countries, have improved since the fall of Saddam Hussein.
The high-level conference will bring together Iraq's neighbors,
including Syria and Turkey, and world powers. The meeting is a
follow-up to one in Baghdad in March, where Maliki urged
neighboring states to do more to end violence in Iraq.
Zebari, who visited Teheran last week to try to persuade Iran to
take part in the conference, said one reason Iran had been
reluctant to say whether it would attend was the detention by US
forces of five Iranians in Iraq in January.
In Teheran, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali
Hosseini told state television: "We have emphasized that we are
ready for any help to strengthen the government and political
process in this country (Iraq)."
Bombing toll reaches 68
US forces fired an artillery barrage in southern Baghdad Sunday
morning, rocking the capital with loud explosions. The death toll
from a suicide car bomb attack in the Shi'ite holy city of Karbala
rose to 68 as residents dug through the debris of heavily damaged
shops.
The blasts in Baghdad came a day after the US military announced
the deaths of nine American troops, including four killed in
separate roadside bombings south of Baghdad and five in fighting in
Anbar province, a Sunni insurgent stronghold west of the
capital.
American troops also detained 72 suspected insurgents and seized
nitric acid and other bomb-making materials during raids Sunday
targeting Al-Qaida in Iraq in Anbar province, and Salahuddin
province, a volatile Sunni area northwest of the capital, the US
military said.
(China Daily via agencies April 30, 2007)
