The Syrian government will host a US-backed security conference on Iraq as planned later this month, despite a threat to cancel it because of a US raid on Syria last month, diplomats said on Wednesday.
Invitations were issued to countries including the US, France, Iran, Iraq and other neighbors shortly before the Oct. 26 US strike, they said.
“There had been a lot of doubt whether the conference would take place. The United States, Britain and other governments have not yet replied, mainly due to the uncertainty,” one of the diplomats said.
Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moualem confirmed after meeting his Iraqi counterpart Hoshiyar Zebari in the Syrian capital on Wednesday that the conference would convene in Damascus next Saturday.
“It will convene as scheduled,” Moualem said.
Speculation has been rife that Syria might scrap the meeting — the third in as many years — to protest the US raid. The government responded by shutting down an American school and a cultural center.
A senior Syrian official had told Arab ambassadors that Syria might also cancel the annual meeting, which is aimed at devising security cooperation measures to help stop the violence in Iraq and rebel attacks on US and Iraqi forces.
The US pushed for the meeting in 2006 as part of its drive to get Arab countries to engage on Iraq. Syria agreed to host it every year as part of a new policy to defuse tension with the Shiite-led government in Baghdad.
Iraqi and US officials have accused Syria of allowing Islamist fighters to infiltrate Iraq. The raid by the US on a border area in eastern Syria further strained relations between Damascus and Baghdad.
Syria said eight civilians died in the attack. A US official said it had killed Abu Ghadiy, whom he identified as a top smuggler of foreign fighters to al-Qaeda in Iraq.
Syrian officials were furious at Iraq’s initial reaction to the raid, the sources said.
An Iraqi government spokesman said a day after the raid that US forces targeted an area from where what he described as terrorist groups attacked Iraq. He later moderated his tone and said Baghdad rejected US “aggression” against Syria.
Zebari condemned the raid but said after meeting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad that the major figure killed had been wanted by Iraq for years.
“This incident, and others, shows the need for security coordination. I received assurances from President Assad that Syria is ready to discuss this issue professionally,” he said.
Assad criticized a security pact being negotiated between Baghdad and Washington as a potential threat to neighboring states.
The official Syrian news agency said Zebari gave Assad a letter from Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki assuring Assad that any pact Iraq signed with the US would not undermine Syria’s security.
Zebari said Iraq would ensure the agreement did not give the US a free hand and that the days when Iraq invaded other nations — a reference to the 1980 to1988 war with Iran and the 1990 invasion of Kuwait — were history.
Meanwhile, an Iraqi soldier on Wednesday sprayed automatic weapons fire on a group of US soldiers at an Iraqi military base in Mosul, killing two and wounding six others before dying in a hail of bullets, an American general said.
Major General Mark Hertling, commander of US forces in northern Iraq, said that the “premeditated” attack occurred in a courtyard as the soldiers waited for their two lieutenants to finish a meeting with an Iraqi army company commander.
Hertling, who said he had spoken with some of the wounded troops, disputed Iraqi accounts that the shooting followed a heated argument between the Iraqi soldier and the Americans.
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