BAGHDAD: Iraq’s first democratically elected government since the fall of military dictator Saddam Hussein is sending a bevy of ministers to Brussels for an international debut a year after the United States put power back into Iraqi hands. “The main goal of this conference is to re-engage the international community in stabilizing and building Iraq,” Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said ahead of Wednesday’s conference on Iraqi reconstruction.

“We are not going to give them our wish list, we are going there to give them our vision” of how to rebuild confidence throughout the Middle East, he said.

A US statement said the meeting would “provide a forum for the new Iraqi Transitional Government to present its priorities, vision and strategies for the transition period leading up to the next round of elections.”

For one European Union diplomat, “the message is clear, it is to include all communities, in particular the Sunnis, in the (Iraqi) political process. It is the best way to counter insurgency.”

The Iraqi government, which took office in late April following elections on January 30, is sending a 30-member delegation led by Zebari but which includes Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari, the defence, interior, finance and justice ministers, and independent experts.

From late June 2004 until April, Iraq was run by a caretaker government appointed by former US civil administrator Paul Bremer and approved by UN special representative Lakhdar Brahimi.

At least 80 countries or bodies including Iran and Syria, the Group of Eight (G8) highly developed nations, Nato, the Arab League and UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan are also expected in Brussels for the meeting.

It is co-sponsored by the European Union and the United States, divided over the 2003 war to oust Saddam but now seizing a chance to bury the hatchet.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is to lead the US delegation and indicated early this month that Iran’s participation posed no problem either.

“We want Iran and Iraq to have good, neighbourly, transparent relations. And to the degree that this serves that cause, we’re all for it,” Rice said.

Zebari said on Sunday: “I think the Brussels conference will result in a clear political decision to support the Iraqi government,” as lawmakers draft a new constitution and prepare for another round of elections scheduled in December.

Three areas were to dominate discussions, cementing Iraq’s political foundations, economic recovery and security issues including judicial reform.

“Iraq will lead the discussions in these three areas,” the US statement said.

The EU has offered help in training 800 Iraq judges, officials and police officers outside Iraq to confront an insurgency that has brought violence and destruction in much of Iraq.

Iraqi delegates are also to meet Nato officials to see how the transatlantic defence organisation can help train Iraqi forces and boost its capacities.

Officials here tout the event as a meeting of equals.

“If this political process, this stabilization process does not succeed, it will affect the interests of other countries immediately” and could destabilize the region, Zebari warned.

US coordinator for Iraq Dick Jones said in Amman: “We are encouraging every government to think about what its national interests are in Iraq and how they can further the interests of the Iraqi people as they pursue those interests.”

Baghdad needs to fill a 110-billion-dollar debt hole dug by the former military dictator, and Jones said the United States would urge countries that do not belong to the Paris Club of state donors “to be generous with Iraq”.

In November, the club unveiled a debt relief package worth 32 billion dollars, but Baghdad has said other financial pledges remained outstanding, including 18 billion dollars from the United States.

Zebari stressed that the burden of reconstruction “should be shared by other members of the international community.

“People must face those challenges, we are rebuilding a country that has collapsed completely ... if we give in we can do nothing.”—AFP