Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD)

Prospect of Sharm el-Sheikh meeting for Iran, US

IRNA - Islamic Republic News Agency

Tehran, April 28, IRNA
Iran-Meeting-US
Despite charging Iran with interference in Iraq's internal affairs, Washington has now increased its attempts to attract Iran's agreement to attend the upcoming meeting of Iraq's neighboring countries in the Egyptian city of Sharm el-Sheikh.

This is while, the US President George W. Bush, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and other White House officials have recently revised their remarks about Iran and have urged the need for holding talks with Iran on Iraq during the event.

The new US stance was heard after its failure to materialize its promise for establishment of democracy and security in Iraq.

The US growing casualties in Iraq have made the US public opinion clearly oppose the warmongering policies of President Bush in the Middle East.

"Therefore, after staging small and big protests and rallies across the country, the American people turned to democrats after 12 years and voted them into the Senate.

Since they entered the US Congress, democrats have brought up their clear opposition to the foreign policies of Bush, in particular the presence of American troops in Iraq.

At the last stage of their opposition, they approved the timetable for withdrawal of US forces within the framework of law.

According to a law recently ratified by the US Congress, the American government should start withdrawing its troops from Iraq as of October 1, 2007.

Concurrent to growing political pressures on the Bush administration on the domestic scene, the Middle East events over the past year including Israel's failure in the face of Lebanese Hizbollah Movement, success of the Hamas government in Palestine, the powerful role of Shiites in Iraq's government and national assembly as well as announcement of production of uranium enrichment on industrial scale by Iran account for the Iranians' increasing role in the Middle East.

Meanwhile, Washington had no option but to accept Iran's growing influence across the region.

Such conditions account for preparing the ground for Washington to overlook its policy and, despite its claims raised on the international scene to isolate Iran, wait impatiently for the presence of Iranian representative at Sharm el-Sheikh meeting to convince Iran to help in controlling the situation in Iraq.

However, the question is that while five Iranian diplomats kidnapped by US troops from Iran's Consulate in the northern Iraqi city of Erbil have not yet been released, why should Iran help Washington come out of the quagmire in which it has sunk in Iraq.

Nevertheless, many political experts believe that if Iran does not participate in Sharm el-Sheikh meeting, the international seminar which is to be attended by the UN Security Council powers will fail and overshadow the US achievements to be materialized by pursuing its goals at this meeting.

However, on the other side, Iran's participation in the event to brief European governments on Iraq's political and security issues will raise the question whether they will use Iran's sensible guidelines.

Upon disintegration of Baathists in Iraq, Iran's policy has always been based on the principle that the destiny of the Iraqi nation should be determined by themselves and that foreign troops should leave the country soon to reduce the violence across the country.

However, the Western powers have rarely paid any attention to such a policy.

The ambiguities surrounding the decision to hold the meeting of Iraq's neighboring states at Sharm el-Sheikh account for the question raised by Iran's public opinion about the goal followed by the White House in urging Iran to participate in the event.

Some political experts consider the possibility that the upcoming meeting on such a large scale to be attended by six countries neighboring Iran, UNSC five permanent members, world eight industrial states plus, Japan, Italy, Bahrain as well as the UN, OIC, Arab League and Egypt, which is to host the meeting, is a consequence of the US attempt to lay the heavy burden of running Iraq's affairs on the shoulders of other countries and urge its neighbors to support the Iraqi government.

According to an Iraqi diplomat, Sharm el-Sheikh meeting will oblige all participants to end the insecurity in the country and take part in its reconstruction.

"Iraq will call on the UN to appoint a committee that will pursue the commitments taken by the countries attending the event to ensure the country's security," added the diplomat.

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