By STEPHEN GRAHAM
The Associated Press
Thursday, May 17, 2007; 1:51 PM
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- Senior U.S and Iranian officials will meet in Baghdad on May 28 to discuss escalating violence in Iraq, both governments confirmed Thursday.
Iraqi leaders have been pressing the two countries with the most influence on the crisis to help end the turmoil. And after reluctant agreement from the Bush administration, the meeting is expected to be the start of the first sustained process of negotiations with Iran since the war began in 2003.
These will be the first high-level talks between Americans and Iranians since a one-day conference in Baghdad in March.
State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker will head the U.S. delegation and expressed hope that Iran would take action to back up its stated interest in establishing a safe and secure Iraq.
Crocker said he would raise alleged Iranian aid to Iraqi militants.
Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki, who gave the initial word on the date of talks during a visit to Pakistan, insisted the presence of U.S. troops is at the root of Iraq's instability.
"Terrorists say that 'We are doing this because of the foreign forces,' and the foreign forces (are) saying that 'We are here because of the terrorist groups,'" Mottaki told reporters in Islamabad, where he has been attending a meeting of the Organization of the Islamic Conference.
"We do believe that a correct approach to Iraq should look to both points, or both areas of the difficulty," he added.
Mottaki said the negotiations would be exclusively about Iraq and that a first meeting in the presence of Iraqi officials would try to set a more detailed agenda.
"Nothing but Iraq is on the agenda," he said.
Crocker, speaking before the State Department confirmed the date of the talks, said the U.S. will be pushing Iran to be a helpful neighbor, and raising allegations that Tehran is providing Shiite militants in Iraq with armor-piercing roadside bombs that have been used against American troops. Iran has rejected the accusation.
He declined to be more specific about items that might be on the agenda, but said the talks would be an opportunity for Iran to move into a "whole new era in its relationship with Iraq."
Last year, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice gave former U.S. ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad a mandate to open talks with Iran _ but only to discuss Iraq. The Iranians initially rejected the offer of direct talks only on Iraq, saying the U.S. had raised other issues and was trying to use the meeting for propaganda.
But U.S. and Iranian diplomats went on to hold rare discussions on the sidelines of a March gathering in Baghdad that helped lay the groundwork for a conference on Iraq earlier this month in Egypt. However, a much-touted meeting at that conference between Rice and Mottaki failed to materialize.
The last talks largely served to underscore the wide gulf between Americans and Iranians over the crisis in Iraq and the ways to end it. Envoys traded harsh words and blamed each other.
The U.S. broke off diplomatic relations with Iran over the 1979 Iran hostage crisis and although the agreement to hold more talks could be a sign of a turn in the relationship, tensions between Washington and Tehran have been escalating recently.
The two sides are at loggerheads over Tehran's nuclear program _ a topic both Mottaki and Crocker said would not be discussed in Baghdad.
The U.S. also accuses Iran of arming and financing militants in Iraq _ a claim Iran denies. U.S. and some Iraqi officials suspect the Iranians may be stoking a growing power struggle among Shiite factions and political parties _ despite Tehran's insistence that it is working to help bring stability to Iraq.
Vice President Dick Cheney warned Iran last week during a visit to the Gulf that the U.S. and its allies would prevent the country from developing nuclear weapons and dominating the region.
Iran denies seeking to build nuclear weapons and accuses the U.S. of seeking to topple its government.
Mottaki said Iran's top nuclear negotiator, Ali Larijani, and European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana would resume their talks on the nuclear deadlock next week in Spain or another European country.
He said Iran was "flexible" and was seeking to remove "ambiguities" about its intentions. But he gave no indication that Iran would agree to the U.N. demand that it freeze uranium enrichment, a process that can produce material for nuclear weapons as well as civilian power stations.
He accused some countries, which he did not name, of exerting unfair pressure on members of the U.N. Security Council, which already has introduced limited sanctions against Iran over the nuclear issue.
In an apparent reference to Washington's refusal to rule out the use of force against Iran, Mottaki said that military might alone was no longer enough to guarantee success in foreign policy.
He said both the U.S. invasion of Iraq and Israel's war in Lebanon last year, which pitted it against Hezbollah fighters backed by Iran and Syria, failed in the face of "resistance," Mottaki said.
"We do believe that ... resistance now is (an) essential part of the belief of the Islamic ummah (community), of the Middle East people."
Mottaki said any broader improvement in relations would take time.
"The file of the problems between the United States and Iran in bilateral relations in very thick," Mottaki said.
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Associated Press writer Ravi Nessman in Baghdad contributed to this report.