Jordan takes part in Damascus meeting, Saudi Arabia absent as US says it killed 32 suspected smugglers of Iranian powerful weapons

JT with agency dispatches

IRAQ’S DEPUTY FOREIGN minister urged his country’s neighbours Wednesday for genuine support and said he hoped a meeting in Damascus on Iraq’s deteriorating security would produce real results instead of broken promises.

A Jordanian security delegation attended the meeting, which is the first of a Damascus-based panel set up at a May conference in Sharm El Sheikh, an official told The Jordan Times.

Saudi Arabia was absent from the first meeting of the newly-created Security Committee for Coordination and Cooperation on Iraq.

A US delegation, headed by Washington’s top diplomat in Syria, Charge d’Affaires Michael Corbin, attended the two-day meeting, as well as representatives of Iran, the Arab League, Bahrain and Egypt and UN Security Council permanent members.

But Saudi Arabia’s decision not to participate cast doubt on how effective the meeting would be. Its absence was likely due to its bad relations with the Syrian government, according to the Associated Press.

Saudi officials did not comment, but the kingdom and Damascus have been deeply divided over Syria’s ties to Iran and the Shiite Hizbollah group in Lebanon.

“We hope that this meeting will not be a routine one and will be effective and will come up with effective results that achieve the goal of supporting it in its current dilemma,” Iraq’s Deputy Foreign Minister Labid Abbawi said Wednesday.

“Iraq expects real and genuine support in passing through this dilemma and suffering of terrorism and violence,” he added.

British embassy official Irfan Siddiq said no specific “demands” were put on the table at the meeting but expressed hope it would end with “positive and tangible results, not just talk.” He ruled out any Britain-Syria bilateral meetings on the meeting’s sidelines.

Iraq and its neighbours have held a series of meetings in recent years in which Baghdad has repeatedly urged them to help increase cooperation to prevent foreign fighter infiltration, end violence and restore stability to the war-torn country, while the Sunni Arab nations have pushed the Shiite government to reconcile with Iraq’s Sunni Arab minority.

The commission was created in an attempt to step up security cooperation, which so far has seen little progress despite Arab promises.

Hesham Youssef, the Arab League’s representative at the meeting, repeated Arab demands that Iraqis reconcile among themselves if the country wants peace and security.

“The Arab League believes that national conciliation in Iraq is key to solve Iraq’s problems and maintains its unity and achieve stability,” he said. “Shortcomings that have blocked the building of armed and security forces on professional bases should be dealt with.” Youssef described the atmosphere after the first session as “positive.” Syria’s interior minister said his country has tightened measures on its border with Iraq to prevent foreign fighters from crossing into its eastern neighbour.

The US has repeatedly accused Syria of allowing foreign fighters to cross its border into Iraq to join anti-American insurgents. Syria denies the charges saying it is impossible to control the long desert border.

Interior Minister Lt. Gen. Bassam Abdul-Majid said Syria has undertaken steps along its border to “help peace prevail in Iraq”, including stationing fixed checkpoints and border patrols. It also has tightened measures on the crossing of people who are under the age of 30 and repatriated others to their countries, he said.

Abdul-Majid also said Syria has arrested a large number of infiltrators who tried to cross the border and handed them over to authorities in their countries. He did not elaborate.

Corbin, the US diplomat, refused to speak to reporters, but US Ambassador to the UN Zalmay Khalilzad said in New York on Tuesday that the Damascus meeting would deal with a “lot of issues with regard to security” in Iraq.

“It’s the question of foreign fighters coming across the border. It’s the question of weapons coming across the border to illegitimate groups. It’s the question of training. It’s the question of cooperating to share information,” Khalilzad said.

The security committee was created during a May conference on Iraq involving its neighbours, the US and UN at Egypt’s Red Sea resort of Sharm El Sheikh. During that meeting, US and Syrian officials met for the first time in two years after their relations worsened following the February 2005 assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Hariri.

Iran tells Maliki it is helping secure Iraq

In Tehran, Iran told Iraq’s prime minister on Wednesday it was helping establish security in Iraq, where the US military accuses Tehran of fomenting instability by training and supplying militants.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki, in Iran for talks with senior officials, is facing mounting pressure to secure a power-sharing deal among Iraq’s warring sects before a US report in September on strategy there.

But his government is crumbling, with almost half the Cabinet ministers quitting or boycotting meetings, and the death toll from sectarian killings steadily climbing.

Iran, with a majority of Shiite Muslims like Iraq, has been an important political player there since the 2003 US invasion. Tehran denies Washington’s accusations that it is stoking violence, and instead blames the US occupation.

Baghdad has urged both countries to negotiate and not fight out their differences on Iraqi soil.

“The Islamic Republic of Iran has always made a special effort to help provide and strengthen security in Iraq,” Iranian First Vice President Parviz Davoudi said in talks with Maliki, the official IRNA news agency reported.

Iran has in the past made expressions of support that have been followed by US charges it is still backing militants.

Maliki’s visit comes two days after Iraqi, Iranian and US officials held the first meeting of a committee aimed at improving cooperation on stabilising Iraq.

That committee was formed after groundbreaking talks in May and July, also in Baghdad, between Washington and Tehran, their most high-profile meetings since diplomatic ties were cut shortly after Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution.

Ali Akbar Velayati, an international affairs adviser to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said those talks had shown that Iran “can play an influential role in Iraq”.

“Today they [US officials] are forced... to ask for Iran’s help, but these negotiations are not aimed at helping America. Iran entered talks to help the Iraqi people,” he said, according to Iran’s ISNA news agency.

Analysts say both Tehran and Washington have an interest in helping Maliki’s government restore calm.

Iran, which has powerful friends among Iraq’s leading political factions, wants a stable neighbour with a friendly Shiite government in power. For the United States, a secure Iraq could help hasten its own withdrawal.

But Iranian analysts caution against overstating Tehran’s ability to stem the violence.

“Iran definitely has some influence in Iraq and sometimes this influence is exaggerated. People sometimes say Iran has control of many Shiite militias. But I think in fact Iran has limited influence,” said one Iranian political analyst.

US Defence Secretary Robert Gates said on Sunday he was disappointed with the lack of progress on reconciliation by Maliki, whose government faces a crisis with 17 ministers - almost half his Cabinet - quitting or staging boycotts.

Maliki flew to Iran from Turkey, where he pledged to crack down on Kurdish rebels who use northern Iraq as a base.

US military says air, ground raids kill 32 suspected militiamen

US-led forces swooped into the Shiite militia stronghold of Sadr City on Wednesday, killing 32 suspected militia members and detaining 12 others in fighting and an air strike targeting alleged smuggling networks from Iran.

Iraqi police and witnesses said nine civilians were killed in the attack, which occurred hours before Maliki arrived in Tehran.

Driving ban imposed

Iraqi authorities, meanwhile, clamped a three-day driving ban on the capital and erected new checkpoints as thousands of Shiite pilgrims began their annual trek towards a mosque in northern Baghdad to mark the anniversary of the death of one of Shiite Islam’s key saints.

The military said the raid targeted fighters from breakaway factions of radical Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr’s Mehdi Army who smuggle arms from Iran and facilitate the travel of Iraqi militants to Iran for training.

“The individuals detained and the terrorists killed during the raid are believed to be members of a terrorist network known for facilitating the transport of weapons and explosively formed penetrators, or EFPs, from Iran to Iraq, as well as bringing militants from Iraq into Iran for terrorist training,” the military said.

The statement said the main suspect in the raid was a liaison between Iraqi fighters and Iran’s elite Quds Force, which is accused of arming and training the militants.

On Thursday, more than one million Shiite faithful - flogging themselves with iron chains and slicing their foreheads with swords - are expected to march towards the shrine of Imam Al Kadhim in Baghdad’s Shiite Kazimiyah neighbourhood. The ritual of grief banned under Saddam Hussein, and some Iraqi officials say up to four million may show up.