BAGHDAD (Reuters) - U.S. and Iranian envoys spoke to each other directly at a regional meeting in Baghdad on Saturday but their exchanges dealt only with problems in Iraq and not with nuclear diplomacy.
Iraq’s foreign minister said the U.S. and Iranian delegates had a “lively exchange”. All sides said talks were constructive and focused on Iraq.
The top Iranian official at the talks said he had no one-to-one talks with U.S. officials. He called for a withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq and rejected charges of interference in the country.
“There were no one-to-one meetings, everything was in the framework of the meeting,” said Abbas Araghchi, deputy foreign minister for legal and international affairs.
Asked if he had direct talks with the Iranians, U.S. Ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, told an earlier news conference: “I did talk to them directly and in the presence of others. We engaged across the table as well.”
In an interview with Tim Russert to be broadcast on Sunday morning on NBC’S “Meet the Press”, he said he had shaken hands with the Iranians.
Iraq called the meeting to enlist the support of its neighbors to help end the bloodshed, but it was closely watched as a rare moment for U.S. and Iranian officials to sit down together at a time of growing tension over Iran’s nuclear aims.
Washington has led international calls for tougher sanctions on Iran over its refusal to stop enriching uranium, which could be used for nuclear weapons, and it has accused Iran of backing Shi’ite militias in southern Iraq.
Tehran says its nuclear program is limited to peaceful power generation and denies backing the militias.
“There is no reason why we should interfere in Iraqi politics other than supporting peace and stability in Iraq,” Araghchi said. He said he had demanded the release of six Iranians he said were “abducted” in Iraq by U.S. forces.
U.S. soldiers seized five men Tehran says are diplomats in a raid on an Iranian government office in the northern Iraqi city of Arbil on January 11, in the second such incident in a month.
CAREFULLY COORDINATED
In a speech to the conference, Khalilzad pointedly urged Iraq’s neighbors to stop the flow of weapons, fighters and sectarian propaganda fuelling violence in Iraq.
He denied U.S.-led forces had anyone in detention who was a diplomat.
Washington, which has no diplomatic relations with Iran, has had contacts with Iranian officials in group settings, including as recently as September, but has resisted bilateral talks.
The Iranian delegation arrived in the conference hall and took their seats without making any direct contact with U.S. delegates shortly before the meeting officially opened.
After a public opening session, the delegates retired to a private conference room where Iraqi and U.S. officials sat at either end of a long table, with Araghchi next to the Iraqi.
The two envoys held news conferences in the same room within minutes of each other but their entrances were carefully coordinated using two separate doors to avoid meeting.
Araghchi said foreign forces were fuelling a cycle of bloodshed because their presence was used to justify violence and violence was used in turn to justify their presence.
“The presence of foreign forces cannot help the security in Iraq in long-term time,” Araghchi said. “We need a timetable for the withdrawal of foreign forces.”
Asked about U.S. charges that Iran was arming militant groups in Iraq, Araghchi hit out at the United States over what he called “intelligence failure”.
Additional reporting by Ibon Villelabeitia and Claudia Parsons
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