AFP – Iraq will push hard at this week’s security conference in Egypt for firm measures from its neighbours to help end the bloodshed, but also fears the event may be hijacked by US-Iran talks.
On May 3 and 4, leaders from Iraq’s neighbours, the five permanent UN Security Council members and the Group of Eight will meet in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh to discuss the turmoil plaguing Iraq.
The meeting aims to find ways and means to pull Baghdad out of the brutal communal strife that threatens to overspill and become a full-blown regional crisis.
The conference is a second attempt by Baghdad within two months to build a consensus with its neighbours, some of which stand accused of stirring extremist violence and supplying arms and recruits to Iraqi militant groups.
"It is very important that progress happens in this meeting, as the Iraqi situation can’t be resolved without the help of neighbours," said Joost Hiltermann, an Iraq expert at the International Crisis Group think tank.
Iraqi officials have worked overtime to make the conference a success, and Sunday’s decision by Tehran to attend despite the presence of the United States is a feather in the cap for Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.
After a flurry of diplomatic visits between Iraq and Iran, Tehran agreed to dispatch its Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki to a gathering at which he will sit at the same table as US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice.
On Sunday, Maliki again warned his neighbours that the "terrorist attacks that target Iraq are not limited to Iraq, but will spread to every country in the world."
The Shiite premier toured Egypt, Kuwait and Oman to drum up support for his initiative among Sunni Arab leaders suspicious of his new regime, which is seen by them as being too close to Iran, their traditional rival.
Meanwhile his foreign minister, Hosyhar Zebari, was given the tough job of persuading Tehran to set aside its enmity with the West.
Tehran accepted the invitation to the talks during a telephone conversation on Sunday between Maliki and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Iran was particularly angry about the continued detention of five of its officials by the US military in Iraq on suspicion of stirring anti-American insurgency in the war-torn country.
Washington has repeatedly accused Iranian elements of arming, funding and training Iraqi groups, especially Shiite militias in their fight against Sunni factions and also against US soldiers.
"The developments between Iran, the United States and the West have had a negative effect on Iraq’s situation, and the more they have dialogue together the more it will help the Iraqi government’s efforts to succeed," Zebari said.
"We believe that the participation of the Islamic republic is vital and necessary in order to decrease the level of tension in Iraq," he said during his visit to Tehran last week.
Experts have voiced fears that Iran’s growing influence in Iraq could provoke regional Sunni states into helping armed elements from Iraq’s minority Sunni community, thus worsening the sectarian conflict.
Saudi Arabia has already said that Maliki is not doing enough to include members of his country’s former Sunni elite in the mainstream political process, and on Sunday Zebari confirmed reports its king had turned down a request to meet Maliki.
These changing dynamics threaten to turn Iraq’s sectarian strife into the regional conflict feared by the United States and its allies.
The United Nations pointman in Iraq, Ashraf Qazi, said the Egypt conference is at least an opportunity for Iraq and its suspicious neighbours to bury their differences and pull Baghdad out of the quagmire.
"Each of them have their concerns, each of them have their perspectives. But each has a common stake, a shared stake in stability of Iraq," Qazi said.
"There is no exception… because if things were to destabilise here it would have a negative impact on their security environment," he told AFP.
But with Washington and Tehran at loggerheads over the latter’s alleged plan to build nuclear weapons, he said, a possible meeting between Rice and Mottaki would to some extent take the focus away from the Iraq issue.
