ROME — Iran for the first time joined a U.S. and NATO-dominated coordinating group on Afghanistan on Monday, sending a delegation to Rome to participate in discussions on coalition military strategy that included a closed-door report by Gen. David Petraeus, the top commander in Afghanistan.
Iran’s presence, along with representation from nearly a dozen other Muslim countries, as well as the Organization of the Islamic Conference, “shows we are on a common path. We are not alone,” said Michael Steiner, Germany’s special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Richard Holbrooke, the Obama administration’s top Afghanistan representative, said Washington was “asked whether we had any problem” with Iran attending and “we said no. We recognize that Iran has a role to play in the peaceful settlement of the situation in Afghanistan.”
Cooperation on Afghanistan, he said, had no bearing on U.S. efforts to curtail Iran’s nuclear program.
Holbrooke also discounted news reports Monday indicating that U.S. officials had new information on the location of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, believed to be hiding in Pakistan.
“Hardly a day goes by when somebody doesn’t say they know where bin Laden is,” he said. “There is nothing new.”
Petraeus, the top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, briefed the meeting on what Steiner said was the coalition’s “highest priority,” training Afghan forces to take over security there beginning next year. Afghan President Hamid Karzai has said he expects that transition to be completed countrywide by 2014.
At a summit conference in Lisbon next month, NATO plans to begin putting together criteria and a timetable for coalition troops to end their combat role. President Barack Obama has said he expects to begin an initial drawdown of U.S. forces in July.
Mark Sedwill, the top NATO civilian in Afghanistan, emphasized that the coalition “will still have troops in Afghanistan after 2014” as trainers and advisers. But the hope, he said, is that by then the Taliban threat will be sufficiently reduced.
