Iraqi Official Says Iran Has Escalated Involvement in Iraq

Rubaie said a resumption of a more meaningful U.S.-Iran dialogue is critical to stabilize Iraq. "The U.S. government needs to have serious engagement with Iran, not about wishy-washy things, not just to keep them busy," he said. Both Washington and Baghdad need to develop a carrot-and-stick approach that makes Iran "feel the pain" and "pay a heavy price" for its intervention in Iraq while addressing Iran's security and economic concerns.

The third and last meeting between U.S. Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker and Iranian Ambassador Hassan Kazemi Qomi on Aug. 6 was particularly difficult, Rubaie said. "They were both reading from scripts," he said.

Although both Washington and Tehran have left the door open to further talks, the first public bilateral diplomacy is for the moment moribund, he added. "We believe that when they stopped engagement in the beginning of August, that's when [Iran] upgraded the arms," he said.

Iraq is not willing to confront Iran militarily, Rubaie said. At a Nixon Center conference yesterday, he also said there should be "absolutely no -- bit fat no, N-O -- bombing of Iran" by the United States.

The U.S. military, along with Iraqi forces, should move gradually with a plan this year to set up about six more joint security stations inside Baghdad's large Shiite district of Sadr City, where many Iranian-controlled "special cells" of the Mahdi Army of Moqtada al-Sadr are believed to have taken refuge, he said.

On the sensitive issue of the tens of thousands of Sunni fighters who have volunteered to join local police forces, Rubaie charged that the U.S. military was effectively arming former Sunni insurgents by paying them, and expressed concern that the fighters were more loyal to the U.S. military than to the Iraqi government.

"The Iraqi government needs to have the opportunity to win them first and their allegiance" as well as to command those local forces, he said.

Tension has flared in recent days as Iraqi political leaders have demanded that the U.S. military halt its recruitment of the volunteers, considered by top U.S. commanders to be the most promising development for security in Iraq in the past six months. Although the Iraqi government has hired many of the volunteers as police in the western province of Anbar, which is 95 percent Sunni, it has proven far more reluctant to endorse the Sunni fighters in mixed sectarian provinces such as Diyala, which lies between Baghdad and Iran.

A senior U.S. commander who oversees Diyala said some local Sunni volunteers have quit in frustration at the government's delays in hiring them as police.

"They stood up to fight against al-Qeada. They have been in a tough fight here, shedding blood with their comrades against this despicable enemy, and they have not been compensated for that. They are looking for recognition, and they have not seen it yet," Brig. Gen. John Bednarak, deputy commander, Multinational Division North, said in an interview Thursday.

Bednarak said more than 3,000 primarily Sunni volunteers -- including tribal members and former insurgents -- have been vetted, but none has been hired by the Ministry of Interior. Instead, the U.S. military is putting them on temporary 90-day contracts under which they earn less than $300 a month.

Diyala is authorized to have 13,000 police and has requested an increase to 21,000 because of violence, but the Ministry of Interior has "held up on that for several months," Bednarak said.

"They are worried . . . that we are arming civilians that would rise up" against existing security forces. "I don't see that happening," he said.

Bednarak said it is essential to "get through this current roadblock so we can continue with additional personnel" to maintain control in Diyala towns and villages that the U.S. military and Iraqi forces have cleared in recent months. "The threat is still very real," he said.

Staff writer Karen DeYoung contributed to this report.