A meeting between Iraq, its neighbours and world powers to follow up earlier talks aimed at stabilising the country will be held in Egypt in the first week of May, Iraq's foreign minister said on Saturday.
The meeting, a rare opportunity for Washington and its adversaries Iran and Syria to sit at the same table, had been expected to take place in Istanbul in early April but Hoshiyar Zebari said the Iraqi government wanted it to be in Egypt.
"We have chosen Egypt to be the place of the meeting. It will be on the 3rd and 4th of May. We still have work to do, like agreeing on the meeting's agenda," Zebari told a news conference in Baghdad.
Zebari said there will be 21 ministers at the meeting, including officials from G8 nations and the European Union. US officials in Baghdad have said Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice would attend.
It will follow a conference last month where US diplomats met with representatives from Iran and Syria to urge them to stop supporting insurgents and stem Shia-Sunni sectarian violence from spreading to other countries in the region. "I believe there will be opportunities for bilateral talks between the participants," Zebari said. "The Baghdad conference was the starting point and an attempt to break the ice."
Syria and Iran deny Washington's charge that they support militants, while the United States has spurned suggestions, including in the December report of the Iraq Study Group, that it should reach out to them for help in stabilising Iraq. Although Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki had wanted the May meeting in Baghdad, it was ruled out as some countries expressed concern about security for their ministers.
"The commitments of these countries are very clear ... we are suffering from a security problem and we ask our neighbours to help us and cooperate with us," Zebari said. He added that the door had been left open for a future meeting in Turkey.
He also said an international conference on a five-year plan to reconstruct Iraq will be held in Egypt at the same time. The International Compact with Iraq would see Iraq given international support - financial, political and technical - in return for political, security and economic reforms.
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