DUSHANBE, May 28, Asia-Plus – U.S. and Iranian officials are expected to hold rare talks to discuss how to rein in escalating violence in Iraq, according to media reports Monday.
The meeting in Baghdad on Monday will be the first public and formal one between U.S. and Iranian representatives — U.S. ambassador Ryan Crocker and his Iranian counterpart Hassan Kazemi-Qomi — since the United States cut off diplomatic relations with Iran 27 years ago.
The meeting is only supposed to cover Iraq, where sectarian violence between minority Sunnis and majority Shi”ites threatens all-out civil war that could spill into the region. Iran”s atomic program will not be up for discussion, media reports added.
The United States accused Iran of “supplying Iraqi Shi”ite militias with deadly roadside bombs” that kill American troops in Iraq and of “political meddling in Shi”ite-led Iraq.”
In the past few months, the U.S. military has displayed explosively formed penetrators (EFPs) — a particularly deadly roadside bomb — and other weapons which it said are being supplied by Iran to Iraqi militants to target American soldiers.
Iran accused the U.S. of improperly seizing five Iranians in Iraq this spring. The U.S. military is holding the five whom it said are “intelligence agents,” but Iran said “are diplomats.”
The U.S. also has complained about the detention or arrest of several Iranian-Americans in Iran in recent weeks.
These disputes came amid an international showdown over Iran”s nuclear program. U.S. officials have said Tehran is seeking nuclear weapons, though Iran said the program is for civilian energy purposes only.
U.S. officials do not expect “any stunning, startling breakthroughs” from the meeting, as it comes amid U.S. warships war games in the Gulf and Tehran”s saying it has uncovered spy networks on its territory run by the United States and its western allies.
The White House has said it does not confirm or deny allegations about intelligence matters.
On Sunday, Iran summoned the Swiss ambassador who represents American interests in Iran in protest, demanding “necessary explanation” about the matters.
U.S. president George Bush, who initially rejected talks with Iran, takes U-turn this time under mounting domestic pressure to end the Iraq war and pull out some 150,000 U.S. troops.
May is on track to be one of the deadliest months for U.S. troops in the four-year-old war. More than 100 have been killed so far, most by roadside bombs.
Despite ambivalence within the Bush administration, U.S. diplomats hope this kind of limited conversation “can build confidence on both sides and lead to something more substantive.”
The United States broke off diplomatic ties with Iran in April 1980 after the seizure of its embassy by Iranian students who occupied it from November 1979 until January 1981, when they released the 52 hostages.
