WASHINGTON, 12 April 2008 — The US will send several senior diplomats to Arab states to encourage them to increase their support for Iraq and reopen their embassies in Baghdad.
President George W. Bush commanded Gen. David Petraeus, the top US commander in Iraq, and Ryan C. Crocker, the country’s ambassador to Baghdad, to stop over in Saudi Arabia on their way back to Iraq to persuade Riyadh to render overall support for Iraq, The New York Times reported yesterday.
The president also said Thursday that he had ordered senior American diplomats in the Middle East to meet with leaders in Kuwait, Jordan, Qatar, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to urge them to reopen their embassies in Baghdad.
Bush also announced that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice would attend a conference later this month in Kuwait and another in Stockholm for nations helping Iraq rebuild its economy.
Rice has taken 14 trips to the Middle East in the past 15 months for talks on Palestinian-Israel peace and Iraq war.
She will travel to Kuwait to attend an international conference regarding the Iraq situation on April 22. There is some speculation that, while there, Rice may well bump into her Iranian counterpart, Manouchehr Mottaki.
The US State Department is keeping silent regarding such a possibility. All Sean McCormack, the State Department spokesman, would say at his press briefing on Wednesday was that “there’s nothing on the schedule for them to meet”. He did not rule out anything, and Tehran has yet to announce Mottaki’s participation at the Kuwait conference.
McCormack, however, did say that relations with the Iranians have incrementally thawed in recent months. “There was a sort of avoidance (initially) on the part of the Iranians. But that’s changed ... They (Rice and Mottaki) didn’t have what I would describe as any substantive conversations, but there was some interaction (at a previous Istanbul meet on Iraq),” he said.
While traveling to Kuwait, Rice will stop in Bahrain for an exclusive meeting on April 21 with her counterparts from Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Oman.
These Middle Eastern countries are keen to hear from Rice her interpretation of a series of signals in recent days suggestive of a maneuvering in the Iran policy by the Bush Administration.
Rice will travel to Sweden, hosting the 2nd international conference on Iraq, on May 29 in collaboration with Iraq’s government and the United Nations.
It will be the first follow-up meeting after the launch of the five-year International Compact with Iraq peace and development plan in Egypt last May.
There also is talk about a trip by President Bush to the Middle East. A Middle East summit meeting in the Egyptian resort of Sharm El-Sheikh in May is under discussion, the Egyptian Foreign Ministry said yesterday.
Ministry spokesman Hossam Zaki, quoted by the state news agency MENA, said the idea was to hold the summit on the sidelines of a World Economic Forum meeting which is taking place in the town between May 18 and 20.
He did not say who might take part but MENA said the idea was to have President Bush and Egyptian, Jordanian and Palestinian leaders talk about Middle East peace.
