Iran's FM suggests Tehran to attend Baghdad meeting

Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki suggested on Monday that his country would send envoy to attend the Saturday international conference on Iraq issue.

According to a report of the official IRNA news agency, when addressing reporters in a joint press conference with Chad's Foreign Minister Ahmat Allam-Mi, Mottaki said idea of holding a meeting of foreign ministers of Iraqi neighboring states in Baghdad was first offered to Iran and Syria.

"Some countries proposed to hold the meeting at the level of deputy foreign ministers, we have agreed and ...we are finishing the consideration of sending Iran's deputy foreign minister to the meeting," he added.

However, the minister also kept Tehran's reservations on the meeting, saying "in our talks with the Iraqi side in the past 10 days we raised certain points regarding the proposal, the goal of participants in the meeting should be to provide assistance to the Iraqi government and any decision should be made by officials inside and not outside the country".

Mottaki failed to elaborate what kind of concerns Iran had, but it was believed that Tehran feared the U.S. may accuse Iran of supporting Iraqi insurgents in that war-torn country.

Last week, the Iraqi government invited its neighboring states and five permanent members of the UN Security Council -- the United States, Russia, China, France and Britain -- to take part in the upcoming conference. U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has noted that her country would join the meeting and supported the Iraqi invitation to Iran and Syria.

Iran's Supreme National Security Council chief Ali Larijani responded by saying that Tehran would join the conference if it is expedient "since Iran supports solving problems of Iraq by all means".

Washington's new position was considered by international media as a huge diplomatic turnabout since the Bush administration refused direct dialogue with Tehran over the Iraqi issue for long time, and this meeting could be the first public U.S.-Iranian encounter in nearly three years.

The United States has persistently accused Iran of supporting the Iraqi insurgents to fight with coalition forces since the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime in 2003, but Tehran has denied it and saying such allegations were deliberate intervention to the Iran- Iraq ties by the U.S.

Due to what the Americans termed as "bad role" played by Iran in Iraq, a number of Iranians in that country have been arrested and the U.S. also increasingly started to build up its military power in the Gulf Region.

Source: Xinhua