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Iraq president Talabani to visit Iran this
weekend
21.11.2006
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BAGHDAD, November
21, -- Iraqi President Jalal Talabani is to fly to
Iran this weekend for talks with President Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad, aides said.
"The president will go to Iran this weekend and meet
the Iranian president. The two will discuss a range
of issues including the current situation in Iraq,"
a source close to the president said.
An MP for the main Shiite bloc which leads the
government confirmed that Talabani was scheduled to
travel to Iran on Saturday.
"He is going to Iran because he was invited a long
time ago by the Iranian president himself," Bassem
Sharif said, referring to reports in the Iranian
official media earlier this month of an impending
visit.
Sharif added that there was a possibility that
President Bashar al-Assad of Iran's regional ally
Syria might join the Tehran talks, following a
landmark visit to Baghdad this week by Syrian
Foreign Minister Walid Muallem. |
Iraqi
President : Jalal Talabani, a Kurd
Photo: Military |
But Talabani's spokesman Hiwa Othman denied that
such a summit was in the pipeline.
"There is no such three-way summit in Tehran and our
president is looking forward to meet his Syrian
counterpart in Damascus at some point of time,"
Othman told AFP.
But other government officials said that the
restoration of diplomatic relations between Iraq and
Syria, broken off more than a quarter of a century
ago, was in the offing and that an announcement
might be made before Muallem wraps up his visit
Tuesday.
The ousted regime of Saddam Hussein broke off
diplomatic relations with Syria in 1980 in protest
at its support for Iran in its eight-year war with
Iraq that broke out that year.
The talk of a meeting between Talabani and his
Iranian and Syrian counterparts comes amid growing
pressure on the US administration to review its
coldshouldering of the two Iraqi neighbours.
Washington expressed scepticism Monday that the
weekend talks would lead to progress on the ground.
State Department deputy spokesman Tom Casey said
senior Iraqi and Iranian officials had met in the
past, "and we haven't seen much by way of follow-up
on it. The problem is not what they say, the problem
is what they do," he said.
Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki told Muallem that Iraq
would not be a proxy battleground for Syria and the
United States to settle their differences.
"If Syria or any other state has differences with
the United States, it's their own business," Maliki
told reporters during a joint news conference with
Muallem, the first Syrian minister to visit Baghdad
since the US-led invasion of 2003.
"It should settle these differences, but not at our
cost."
Muallem denied Syria wanted to see instability grip
its eastern neighbour.
"Danger to Iraq is danger for the entire region," he
said.
Muallem's visit comes amid US charges that Syria has
failed to prevent militants from crossing the border
into Iraq to fuel the insurgency.
US military spokesman Major General William Caldwell
said that up to 70 foreign fighters were entering
Iraq by crossing the Syrian border and 20 percent of
those fighters captured in Iraq were Syrians.
On Sunday, Iraqi authorities announced that a
suicide bomber who attacked building labourers in
the Shiite city of Hilla just south of the capital
and killed 22 people was a Syrian.
AFP
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