Iraq: Iran, Syria agree to Baghdad summit

BAGHDAD, Iraq – Iraq’s neighbors, including Iran and Syria, have agreed to join U.S. and British representatives at a regional conference here March 10 on the Iraqi security crisis, government officials said Wednesday.\nDeputy Foreign Minister Labid Abawi told The Associated Press that Russia and France were studying the invitation, but “I don’t see any sign they will refuse.”\n“Syria, Iran, Saudi Arabia, even the U.S and Britain have informed us they will participate,” he said, although Tehran has said publicly it has made no decision. Abawi also said China had agreed to attend.\nPrime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s adviser, Sami al-Askari, also said neighboring countries had agreed to come. Iran has publicly said it is studying the invitation.\n“The conference will be important. It will prove that Iraq is politically capable of holding such a conference. It will send a message to the world,” Abawi said.\nAl-Askari said it would allow countries such as the U.S., Iran and Syria “to sit down together without paying a political price.”\nWashington’s willingness to attend the conference marked a diplomatic turnabout after months of refusing dialogue with Tehran over calming the situation in Iraq.\nSecretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Tuesday that the United States would join the meeting and that Washington supported the Iraqi government’s invitation to Iran and Syria.\nThe Bush administration waited to embrace the idea until Iraq had made progress on a law governing national distribution of oil revenue.\n“We did work with them on the precise timing of the announcement,” said State Department spokesman Sean McCormack.\nThe failure of Iraq’s parliament to pass the oil law has been an irritant in U.S.-Iraqi relations. The difficulty is symbolic of Iraq’s regional, factional and political divisions, and passage is seen by the United States as a key marker of the government’s will and ability to work across those divides.\n“We work with them to encourage them to meet those benchmarks that they themselves have set,” McCormack said. “This is something that they have been talking about for quite some time, and they thought the timing was right for them to hold the conference and so we encouraged them to move forward with it.”\nAli Larijani, the head of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, said earlier that Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari contacted Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki to discuss the conference. “We are reviewing the proposal,” Larijani said, quoted by the state TV Web site.