WASHINGTON, Nov 22: US President George Bush will meet Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki in Jordan next week amid reports of a new Iranian move to restore peace, the White House said on Wednesday.
The announcement said that the Nov 29-30 meeting would focus on the deteriorating security situation in Iraq. But diplomatic observers in Washington have noted that the proposed meeting follows the Iranian move to promote its own peace plan for Iraq.
President Bush will fly directly to Amman from the NATO summit in Riga, Latvia. Mr Bush and Mr Maliki last met on July 25 in Washington.
In a joint statement placed on the White House web site, President Bush and Prime Minister Maliki said their discussions would also focus on the role neighbours can play in supporting Iraq.
“We will focus our discussions on current developments in Iraq, progress made to date in the deliberations of a high-level joint committee on transferring security responsibilities and the role of the region in supporting Iraq,” the statement said.
“We reiterate our commitment to building the foundations of a peaceful, democratic and secure Iraq and to strengthening the partnership between our two nations,” the two leaders said.
IRAN INITIATIVE: On Monday, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad invited his Iraqi and Syrian counterparts to a weekend summit in Tehran to tackle the chaos in Iraq. Iraqi President Jalal Talabani accepted the invitation and was told that Syrian President Bashar Assad would join the discussions.
In the western media, the proposed meeting was seen as an effort to position Iran ahead of any American exit from Iraq.
In an opinion piece on Wednesday, London’s Guardian newspaper described the Iranian proposal as indicating that a `new order is taking shape in the Middle East with Iran and Syria at its centre’.
The Los Angeles Times noted that Washington had reacted to the proposed weekend summit in Tehran with a kind of `sceptical nonchalance’ and advised the Bush administration to `send some invitations of its own’ to hold a similar summit.
Britain and some other close allies are also urging President Bush to discuss Iraq with Iran and Syria, but Washington reacted warily to the move led by its adversaries.
The Iranian overture comes as US officials await a report from a special presidential commission on Iraq, led by Bush family friend and former secretary of state James Baker and former congressman Lee Hamilton.
In preparing the report, Mr Baker met top Iranian and Syrian diplomats in the United States. The commission, due to release its report next month, is expected to recommend US officials reach out to Syria and Iran to help stabilise Iraq.
After the Iranian move, several US media outlets urged the Bush administration not to wait for the Iraq Study Group to suggest that the US open talks with Iran and Syria.
