Iran joins session on Afghan war

ROME - Iran for the first time joined a U.S.- and NATO-dominated coordinating group on Afghanistan on Monday, sending midlevel officials to participate in discussions on coalition military and political strategy that included a closed-door report by Gen. David H. Petraeus.

Iran's presence, along with representatives from nearly a dozen other Muslim countries as well as the Organization of the Islamic Conference, "clearly shows this is not a Western or a NATO effort," said Michael Steiner, Germany's special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, who chaired the meeting. "It transcends geographic, religious and alliance boundaries."

Steiner said the Iranians watched "with interest" Petraeus's PowerPoint presentation - doubtless their first U.S. military briefing - but did not speak at the morning session. During political discussions later in the day, when the head of the Iranian delegation "told me he wanted to speak, I didn't know what he wanted to say," Steiner said.

Mohammad Ali Qanezadeh, director of Asian affairs at Iran's Foreign Ministry, called for a "holistic" approach in Afghanistan that would include military, political and development aspects, according to Steiner's notes of the meeting.

"I had the impression that he appreciated the transparency" of presentations by Petraeus, the top U.S. and NATO military commander in Afghanistan, and Mark Sedwill, NATO's top civilian representative there, Steiner said. "This doesn't mean they have to agree with everything. Let's be realistic."

In one of the more effusive descriptions of the day, Obama administration representative Richard C. Holbrooke called the meeting a "living refutation of the clash of civilizations" cited by al-Qaeda and Taliban propaganda.

The expansion of the former "special representatives" group into the newly named International Contact Group on Afghanistan came after a series of upbeat U.S. assessments of progress in the country in the lead-up to a NATO summit in November and the administration's strategy review, scheduled for December.

Despite rising coalition casualties and falling public approval of the war, the tide has begun to turn, said Sedwill. He cited the arrival of 30,000 more U.S. troops this year, the increased tempo of U.S. Special Operations attacks against Taliban commanders and ongoing U.S. offensives in Helmand and Kandahar provinces.

Having lost the initiative to the insurgents last year, he said, NATO aimed to regain it by the end of 2010. "We believe that we're on course to do that by the end of this year," Sedwill said.

At the NATO summit, which President Obama is scheduled to attend, heads of government will be briefed on "likely candidates" for the first group of provinces to be transitioned from coalition to Afghan security control, beginning "in the first half of 2011," Sedwill said.

Obama has pledged to begin a phased withdrawal of U.S. troops by July. Some NATO members have set deadlines for ending their combat missions in Afghanistan.

The summit will also agree on a "framework for a long-term strategic partnership" with Afghanistan that will extend beyond 2014, the date Afghan President Hamid Karzai has set for final withdrawal of coalition combat forces. The United States signed a similar agreement, outlining security and economic guarantees, with Iraq before the end of the combat mission there.