US Vice President Dick Cheney continued his Middle East tour with a lightning stop in Egypt on Sunday for talks with President Hosni Mubarak on helping Iraq and curbing Iran's rising influence. Cheney went into talks with Mubarak, a close US ally, to seek help in drawing Iraq's minority Sunni Muslims into the country's fragile political process.
Cheney and Mubarak discussed Shiite Iran's increasing power in the region, just as Iran announced it was ready to hold talks with the United Sates in a bid to improve security in Iraq.
"Iran has agreed to talk to the US side over Iraq, in Iraq, in order to relieve the pain of the Iraqi people, to support the government and to reinforce security in Iraq," Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini said.
A spokeswoman for Cheney confirmed US willingness to talk to Iran, as long as conversations remained limited to Iraq. Lea Anne McBride cited US "willingness to have that conversation, limited to Iraq issues, at the ambassador level," she told reporters travelling with Cheney.
News of the talks came after hopes were dashed of a breakthrough in US-Iranian relations at a conference on Iraq's security in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh earlier this month.
At the meeting, Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki barely exchanged pleasantries with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, while a lower-level encounter between high-ranking diplomats lasted just minutes.
Cheney is at the tail-end of a week-long visit to the Middle East that began with a surprise two-day stop in Iraq, then a visit to the United Arab Emirates, and a stop in the Saudi town of Tabuk.
McBride said the meeting with Saudi leaders on Saturday, where he sought their help in Iraq, "served to reaffirm and strengthen old friendships."
The talks came two months after Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah, a close ally, denounced the "illegitimate foreign occupation" of Iraq at an Arab summit and warned that "ugly sectarianism threatens civil war."
The vice president's week-long Middle East swing is aimed at encouraging Washington's allies to help give Iraq's minority Sunni Muslims a larger role in the country's fragile political process.
He is also hoping to win help in curbing the influence of a rising Iran, particularly in war-ravaged Iraq. Some US officials and analysts worry that sectarian violence there may be fed by support for Iraq's Sunnis from predominantly Sunni Saudi Arabia and backing for the Shiite majority from mainly Shiite Iran.
"I don't think it's a proxy war at this stage. That's not the way I perceive it," Cheney told Fox News on Thursday. "I don't think that's the case yet." The White House sees Saudi Arabia as a cornerstone ally in its campaign to isolate Iran and curtail Tehran's nuclear programme, which Washington says is a cover for efforts to build an atomic arsenal. Iran denies the charge.
Cheney's talks in Abu Dhabi came on the eve of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's arrival in the United Arab Emirates on Sunday, the first visit by an Iranian head of state to the close US Gulf ally.
An aide said Cheney and UAE leaders had discussed Ahmadinejad's visit on Saturday, and suggested that Washington bore its Gulf ally no ill will for hosting him.
"They have a very large neighbour less than a hundred miles away," the official said on condition he not be named. "President Ahmadinejad was very interested in visiting. The UAE is a very hospitable neighbour." Cheney is also set to hold talks in Jordan with King Abdullah II before heading back to Washington.
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