BAGHDAD, May 28: The United States and Iran broke a 27-year diplomatic freeze on Monday with a four-hour meeting about Iraqi security. The American envoy said there was broad policy agreement but that Iran must stop arming and financing militants who are attacking US and Iraqi forces. Iran’s ambassador, Hassan Kazemi Qomi, told The Associated Press that the two sides would meet again in less than a month.

US Ambassador Ryan Crocker said Washington would decide only after the Iraqi government issued an invitation. “We don’t have a formal invitation to respond to just yet, so it doesn’t make sense to respond to what we don’t have,” Crocker told reporters after the meeting.

The talks in the Green Zone offices of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki were the first formal and scheduled meeting between Iranian and American government officials since the United States broke diplomatic relations with Tehran after the 1979 Islamic Revolution and the seizure of the US Embassy.

An AP reporter who witnessed the opening of the session said Crocker and Kazemi shook hands.

The American envoy called the meeting “businesslike” and said at “the level of policy and principle the Iranian position as articulated by the Iranian ambassador was very close to our own.”

However, he said: “What we would obviously like to see, and the Iraqis would clearly like to see, is an action by Iran on the ground to bring what it’s actually doing in line with its stated policy.”

Speaking later at a news conference in the Iranian Embassy, Kazemi said: “We don’t take the American accusations seriously.”—AP