US charges that Iran is fueling sectarian strife in Iraq and terrorism in the Middle East led to tense and heated debate in rare talks on Tuesday between the two arch enemies, US officials said.
"There were several heated exchanges in the course of the day," US Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker, who led the US side to the talks in Baghdad, told Washington-based reporters by telephone.
Tehran's envoy Hassan Kazemi Qomi headed the Iranian delegation in the talks that was also attended by a delegation of Iraqi officials led by Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari.
Crocker said arguments erupted when he accused Iran of providing direct support to extremist militias -- both training and actual weapons -- and that Washington had "the proof."
Qomi "took exception to that," Crocker said, adding that a "brief summary" of the evidence was provided by the US at the talks.
"I said we are not here to prove something in a court of law. We are here to let them know we know what they are doing and it needs to stop," he said.
BROAD DISCUSSION
Tensions also spiked when the Iranians sought to "broaden the discussion," which was to be confined to Iraq.
"I noted that a broad discussion would certainly need to take up issues such as their support for terrorism throughout the region, including Hezbollah and Hamas to which again they took exception," Crocker said.
Crocker said the tension at the talks did not surprise him.
"Frankly, I certainly walked into the room today expecting that discussions would be difficult. We've got a lot of problems with the Iranians and, you know, face to face we're not going to pull any punches," he explained.
But he said the meeting could not be described as a "shouting match throughout" but added that the US was "real clear" over "problems about their behavior."
Summarizing the talks as "difficult discussions," Crocker said the difficulty stemmed from "the lack of clear action on the ground to back Iran's stated policy" that it wanted to see security normalized in Iraq.
POSITIVE SPIN
Iraqi leaders, including Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, put a positive spin on the second encounter between the three parties since May, hailing what they said was the creation of a tripartite security committee.
A US official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Washington would "take a look" at the idea.
REASONABLE CHANCE
"We will engage in efforts that we believe have reasonable chance of having some positive effects on the security and strategic stability of Iraq," he said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The talks were hosted by Maliki in his offices inside Baghdad's fortified Green Zone -- an area which US commanders say is bombarded daily with Iranian-made shells.
Crocker stressed that the Iranians "did not at any point" raise a possible withdrawal of US-led coalition forces from Iraq.
"The Iranians did at one point say that it was not at all their policy or intention to `defeat' the US in Iraq," he said.
The envoy also said that he warned at the talks that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard's al-Quds Force's "officers and their surrogates were not going to be safe in Iraq, where they have been linked to militants.
"That's something the Iranians should already know, but we made that clear," he said.
‘HYANGDO’: A South Korean lawmaker said there was no credible evidence to support rumors that Kim Jong-un has a son with a disability or who is studying abroad South Korea’s spy agency yesterday said that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s daughter, Kim Ju-ae, who last week accompanied him on a high-profile visit to Beijing, is understood to be his recognized successor. The teenager drew global attention when she made her first official overseas trip with her father, as he met with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Analysts have long seen her as Kim’s likely successor, although some have suggested she has an older brother who is being secretly groomed as the next leader. The South Korean National Intelligence Service (NIS) “assesses that she [Kim Ju-ae]
In the week before his fatal shooting, right-wing US political activist Charlie Kirk cheered the boom of conservative young men in South Korea and warned about a “globalist menace” in Tokyo on his first speaking tour of Asia. Kirk, 31, who helped amplify US President Donald Trump’s agenda to young voters with often inflammatory rhetoric focused on issues such as gender and immigration, was shot in the neck on Wednesday at a speaking event at a Utah university. In Seoul on Friday last week, he spoke about how he “brought Trump to victory,” while addressing Build Up Korea 2025, a conservative conference
DEADLOCK: Putin has vowed to continue fighting unless Ukraine cedes more land, while talks have been paused with no immediate results expected, the Kremlin said Russia on Friday said that peace talks with Kyiv were on “pause” as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy warned that Russian President Vladimir Putin still wanted to capture the whole of Ukraine. Meanwhile, US President Donald Trump said that he was running out of patience with Putin, and the NATO alliance said it would bolster its eastern front after Russian drones were shot down in Polish airspace this week. The latest blow to faltering diplomacy came as Russia’s army staged major military drills with its key ally Belarus. Despite Trump forcing the warring sides to hold direct talks and hosting Putin in Alaska, there
North Korea has executed people for watching or distributing foreign television shows, including popular South Korean dramas, as part of an intensifying crackdown on personal freedoms, a UN human rights report said on Friday. Surveillance has grown more pervasive since 2014 with the help of new technologies, while punishments have become harsher — including the introduction of the death penalty for offences such as sharing foreign TV dramas, the report said. The curbs make North Korea the most restrictive country in the world, said the 14-page UN report, which was based on interviews with more than 300 witnesses and victims who had
RSS