BAGHDAD ââ¬â Iran agreed to participate with the United States and other countries in a conference about Iraq this week that aims in part to get surrounding countries to stop aiding the insurgency with bombs, guns and terrorists.
Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki told an Iranian envoy that the persistent violence in Iraq ââ¬â some of it carried out by the Shiite militias that Iran is accused of arming ââ¬â could spill over into neighboring countries.
BAGHDAD ââ¬â Iran agreed to participate with the United States and other countries in a conference about Iraq this week that aims in part to get surrounding countries to stop aiding the insurgency with bombs, guns and terrorists.
Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki told an Iranian envoy that the persistent violence in Iraq ââ¬â some of it carried out by the Shiite militias that Iran is accused of arming ââ¬â could spill over into neighboring countries.
It was al-Maliki’s office that announced that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had telephoned to say a delegation from his country would attend the conference.
Iraq’s other neighbors, as well as Egypt, Bahrain and the five permanent U.N. Security Council members have agreed to attend the meeting Thursday and Friday in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheik.
The conference will include U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. In Washington, Rice did not rule out a
"But what do we need to do? It’s quite obvious. Stop the flow of arms to foreign fighters. Stop the flow of foreign fighters across the borders," Rice said Sunday on ABC’s This Week.
Iraqi leaders had been pressing for Iran to attend the meeting in Egypt for weeks but Iran had refused to commit.
In other Iraq news:
-U.S. forces fired an artillery barrage in southern Baghdad on Sunday morning, rocking the capital with loud explosions. U.S. Central Command said in a statement to the Associated Press that it fired the artillery from a forward operating base near Iraq’s Rasheed military base southeast of Baghdad. The statement provided no other details.
-According to an AP tally, 99 servicemembers have died in April in Iraq, the highest monthly number this year. This month also saw hundreds of insurgents either killed or captured, according to Central Command.
U.S. and Iraqi forces have pursued a strategy for three months of building combat outposts throughout the capital to secure Baghdad. Iraqi and U.S. forces also have fanned out into Anbar province, targeting and battling insurgents.
-U.S. troops detained 72 suspected insurgents and seized nitric acid and other bombmaking materials during raids Sunday in Anbar and Salah al-Din provinces, volatile Sunni areas northwest of the capital.
-Fifty-two people were killed or found dead around the country Sunday.
-Authorities imposed an indefinite curfew in Samarra after leaflets attributed to al-Qaeda in Iraq threatened police officers.
-The death toll from a car bomb attack in the Shiite holy city of Karbala rose to 68 as residents dug through the debris of heavily damaged shops. The blast in Karbala, 50 miles south of Baghdad, took place Saturday evening in a crowded commercial area about 200 yards from the shrines of Imam Abbas and Imam Hussein, major Shiite saints. The shrines were not damaged.