Word: sheikhs
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Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice came to the regional conference on Iraq under way in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh to remind Iraq's neighbors of their stake in helping end the conflict in the country. An Iraq that is unstable, she told them, will be "a force of instability for the region." None of Iraq's neighbors would disagree with that. But the problem is that most of them differ with Rice, as well as with the Iraqi government, on how to end the slaughter and achieve peace...
...Arab governments have welcomed the Sharm el-Sheikh conference as an opportunity to have their voices heard on the Iraq crisis. But apart from forgiving some loans dating from Saddam Hussein's rule, they have been reluctant to take further steps, such as giving strong political backing to al-Maliki's government, using their influence with Iraqi Sunni leaders to halt the insurgency and, in the case of Syria, to stem the flow of insurgents from Syria into Iraq...
...fact, at some point during the so-called "neighbor's conference" convened by the Iraqi government and held in the Egyptian resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh, Rice may even go so far as meeting one-on-one with Mottaki. "I wouldn't rule it out," she told ABC's George Stephanopoulos, "because this is not a meeting about the United States and Iran; this is a meeting about Iraq and about what Iraq's neighbors and interested parties can do to help stabilize the situation in Iraq...
...that the Sharm el-Sheikh encounter presages a thaw in U.S.-Iranian relations: Rice sees the step as necessitated by tactical flexibility, but she holds fast to the Bush Administration view that Iran is the engine of much of the violence and chaos in Iraq, Lebanon and the Palestinian territories. As she tells it, the encounter in Sharm will be more of a lecture than an exchange, with the U.S. berating Iran over arms and fighters crossing into Iraq, the actions of militias and so on. Iran is not likely to be moved by those charges, which it routinely denies...
...Iranians will bring complaints of their own to Sharm el-Sheikh, and insist that Iraq's security crisis can't be resolved while U.S. forces remain in the country. If Rice is hoping that influential Arab moderates will echo the U.S. position, she may be disappointed. Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah, who earlier this year denounced the U.S. occupation of Iraq as "illegitimate," recently turned down a request from Iraq's Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to meet in Saudi Arabia before the Sharm conference. "The Saudi king's schedule was not suitable for the timing," Iraqi foreign minister Hoshyar...