Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt – The U.S. and Syria could hold their first substantive high-level talks in years as early as today, energizing an international gathering on Iraq’s future.
Syria has been eager to rekindle relations with a standoffish United States. There were signs Wednesday that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was warmer to that idea than to what would be a more dramatic face-to-face meeting with longtime adversary Iran.
“Wouldn’t rule it out,” Rice responded with a thoughtful nod when asked about meeting with Syria’s moderate foreign minister, a former ambassador to Washington. “We’ll see who’s there and what conversations take place.”
Willing to talk with Iran
Rice said she’s also willing to talk with Iran’s foreign minister, Manouchehr Mottaki, after years of accusations and name-calling between the nations.
“If we encounter each other, then I’m certainly planning to be polite, to see what that encounter brings,” Rice said of a potential discussion with Mottaki.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad expressed interest, too.
He said Wednesday that Teh ran would welcome talks with the U.S. on the sidelines of the conference, the official Islamic Republic News Agency reported.
“The Iranian nation welcomes honest dialogue” with the U.S., Ahmadinejad was quoted as saying during a speech.
The Bush administration has accused both regional heavyweight Iran and the less influential Syria of sowing terrorism in the Middle East and undermining Iraq’s fragile U.S.-backed government.
The U.S. put both Syria and Iran in diplomatic deep freeze in recent years, and until recently, Rice dismissed the notion of talking to them as a fool’s errand. The bipartisan Iraq Study Group, U.S. allies and lawmakers of both parties have urged President Bush to reconsider in the hope that Iran and Syria can be persuaded to use their influence inside Iraq.
The two-day conference in the Red Sea resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh is expected to bring together officials from Iraq, the United States, Iran, Russia, China, Europe and Arab nations.
Although the subject at hand is the economic and political stability of chaotic Iraq, even host Egypt appeared focused on the possibility of tentative diplomatic openings around the edges of the formal sessions.
Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit said, “Whatever exchanges that would – or might – take place, I’m sure it would help.”
Rice, Iraqi leader meet
“At least with the Syrian, I think that there is a great probability that it takes place,” Aboul Gheit told The Associated Press. “With the Iranian, that remains to be seen.”
Rice met Wednesday with embattled Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, whose ties to Iran have sometimes made his U.S. backers nervous.
Al-Maliki advisers said he told Rice that Iraq suffers from being caught in the middle of competing international interests.
Iraqi Planning Minister Ali Baban said al-Maliki told Rice, “A rapprochement must take place between you and the nations of the region to solve the issue of Iraq, particularly Syria and Iran.”
