Egypt talks focus on Iraq security
But potential meeting between the US and Iran threaten to overshadow the conference.
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“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 Manouchehr Mottaki, Iran‘s foreign minister.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, expressed interest, too.
He said on Wednesday that Tehran would welcome talks with the US on the sidelines of the conference, the official Islamic Republic news agency reported.
Instead, the final document to be issued at the security conference in Egypt will make a general call for peace, Zebari said.
“This is legitimising, formalising, the Iraqi government, the elected government, with a bunch of terrorists and killers who are shadows, who are an unknown entity,” Zebari said.
“That’s why we insisted that this is not the right language to be used in an important document and instead there should be a call to all parties to end … the senseless killing of ordinary citizens,” he said.
The Egyptian ceasefire proposal had underlined the differences between Sunni-led Arab nations and the Shia-led Iraqi government.
Zebari said his Egyptian counterpart, Ahmed Aboul Gheit, had agreed to drop the ceasefire proposal and substitute “a general call to end violence” at a meeting on Tuesday.
‘Everything at stake’
On Wednesday, Rice “Iraq’s neighbours have everything at stake”.
Iraq is at the centre of either a stable Middle East or an unstable Middle East.”
In the run-up to the landmark conference, Western and regional leaders have hammered home the same message that Iraq‘s influential neighbours need to do their share.
On Sunday, al-Maliki again warned his neighbours that the “terrorist attacks that target Iraq are not limited to Iraq, but will spread to every country in the world”.
Egyptian police imposed a tight security cordon around Sharm el-Sheikh as the 27 foreign ministers and diplomats representing 22 other countries started arriving.