Washington – The United States agreed Tuesday to join high-level talks with Iran and Syria on the future of Iraq, an abrupt shift in policy that opens the door to diplomatic dealings the White House had shunned in recent months despite mounting criticism.
The move was announced by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in testimony on Capitol Hill, after Iraq said it had invited neighboring states, the United States and other nations to a pair of regional conferences.
The first meeting, at the ambassadorial level, will be held next month. Then Rice will sit down at the table with the foreign ministers from Damascus, Syria, and Tehran at a second meeting in April elsewhere in the region, possibly Istanbul, Turkey.
The Iraq Study Group, the bipartisan panel whose recommendations were largely ignored by the administration, had recommended such a regional meeting in its December report. Rice and other administration officials emphasized, however, that these conferences would be led and organized by the Iraqi government, not the U.S. as suggested by the study group. Still, Democrats seized on the announcement as a long-overdue change in direction by the administration.
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has long advocated a regional conference, though originally it was only meant to include Iraq’s neighbors. The administration decided in recent weeks to attend the conference, but in an effort to avoid the spotlight, it ensured that it will be joined at the table in March by other permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, U.S. officials said. The foreign ministers meeting in April will be further expanded to include representatives of the Group of Eight industrialized countries.
