Iran, US envoys to meet on May 28 in Iraq

ISLAMABAD - Iran and the United States are to meet at ambassador level in Iraq on May 28 to discuss its security situation, Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said on Thursday in Islamabad.

The talks are believed to be the first official bilateral ambassadorial encounter between the arch-foes since they froze relations in the wake of Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution.

Announcing the date for the first time, Mottaki -- whose country is at the centre of international concerns about its nuclear programme -- insisted the talks would only deal with the unrest in Iraq.

“Nothing but Iraq is on the agenda for Iran and US talks,” he told reporters during a conference of Islamic foreign ministers here.

“The talks will strictly be focused on the security situation in Iraq,” he added, saying the meeting would be held in the presence of Iraqi officials.

Iran was sending an “expert diplomat” at ambassador level to the talks while the US had appointed one of their ambassadors as chief negotiator, Mottaki said.

Iranian officials announced several days ago that the meeting would take place within the next few weeks, most likely in Baghdad.

Relations between Tehran and Washington have been bedeviled by the situation in Iraq, where the United States accuses Iran of aiding militant Shiite groups and attacking US forces.

Mottaki batted the issue back at the United States, saying its policies had failed in the country it invaded in 2003 to topple Saddam Hussein.

“We are facing two problems in Iraq, one relates to instability caused by terrorist activities and the other by continuation of occupation of Iraq,” he said.

Mottaki said Iran scrapped negotiations with the United States over Iraq in March last year “due to the US propaganda-based approach.”

Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Wednesday punctured any expectation that the latest meeting would produce a breakthrough, saying its policy of not negotiating with the United States was unchanged.

Khamenei said Iran would merely use the talks with US diplomats to remind Washington of its “occupiers’ duty” in the conflict-torn country.

The United States insisted Monday that the talks did not presage a retreat from its policy to isolate the Islamic republic, with White House spokesman Tony Snow saying the contacts will be “about Iraq and only Iraq.”

Khamenei’s downbeat assessment came after criticism from conservatives of the decision to hold the discussions, which the editor of the hardline daily Kayhan likened to “dancing with wolves and shaking hands with the devil.”

Some moderates had expressed hope the contacts could result in a warming of ties, and a small group of deputies in the Iranian parliament has even been canvassing support to set up an Iran-US friendship group.

Two weeks ago hopes were dashed that Iran and the United States would hold substantive talks at a conference on Iraq’s security in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh.

At that meeting, Mottaki barely exchanged pleasantries with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice while a lower-level encounter between high-ranking diplomats lasted just minutes.

Source : www.khaleejtimes.com