Conference on Iraq ends without bridging gulf between US, Iran

Iraq:The two-day international conference on Iraq ended yesterday without bridging the gulf between the US and Iran or securing unconditional commitments from Iraq's Arab neighbours to help stabilise the country and reduce its indebtedness.

Tensions between the US and Iran may have been exacerbated rather than reduced.

When the Egyptian hosts tried to arrange a face-to-face encounter over dinner on Thursday between US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice and her Iranian counterpart, Manouchehr Mottaki, he walked out.

In his final speech he blamed the US occupation for the chaos in Iraq, called for a timetable for the early withdrawal of US forces, and condemned as "terrorism" the US seizure and detention since January of five Iraq-based Iranian officials.

Mr Mottaki had had meetings on the sidelines of the conference, convened at the resort of Sharm al-Sheikh, with British foreign secretary Margaret Beckett and the UN secretary general Ban Ki- Moon, and lower-level diplomats in the US and Iranian delegations also held direct discussions.

Therefore Mr Mottaki's snub seemed to be directed at seniormost figures in the Bush administration.

They accuse Iran of meddling in Iraq's affairs and arming insurgents. Aware that the US-Iran rift is undermining efforts to bring security to Iraq, the country's foreign minister, Hoshyr Zebari, said he hoped the US and Iran would hold further discussions in coming weeks.

Iraq's Sunni Arab neighbours pledged to support the campaign to end the violence gripping the country on condition that Iraq's weak Shia fundamentalist government take measures which would ensure "the basic right of all Iraqi citizens to participate peacefully in the political process through the country's political system."

The Arabs specified that the "legitimate Iraqi national resistance" should be included in the reconciliation process, a demand neither the US nor the government of premier Nuri al-Maliki has, so far, accepted.

Since the first Sharm al-Shaikh summit in 2004, the Arabs have expressed impatience with US- backed Iraqi governments for their refusal to reach out to disaffected Sunnis, secularists and non-fundamentalist Shias, some of whom have joined the insurgency.

The Arabs expect the government to amend the constitution, reverse legislation excluding former Baathists from public life, introduce a bill for the fair distribution of oil revenues and purge Shia militiamen from the armed forces and police. The Arab League has been directed to convene a conference to promote reconciliation.

Conditionality also applies to the promise made by Saudi Arabia to reduce by 80 per cent Iraq's $18 billion debt to the kingdom. Saudi debt forgiveness amounts to about half of overall pledges of $30 billion made during Thursday's session which closed with the signing of a five-year International Compact for Iraq.

Egypt agreed to cancel its debt of about $800,000 and Slovenia, Bulgaria and Poland said they would write off 80 per cent of the money owed to them, but creditors owed much larger sums - including Kuwait, Russia, China, Qatar and Turkey - have not made specific pledges.

The EU and Britain each promised $200 million in grants although the Iraqi government has hundreds of millions of dollars in the bank that its ministries do not have the expertise to spend effectively.

Once the formal meetings concluded, the international Quartet comprising the US, EU, UN and Russia met the Arab Quartet of Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Syria to discuss resumption of Palestinian-Israeli negotiations.

Ahead of this encounter, Washington had submitted a document of benchmarks to the parties, calling on the Israelis to ease restrictions on Palestinian movement and the Palestinians to halt the firing of rockets into Israel.

However Israel promptly announced it could not commit to demands which could compromise its security.