U.S. and Iran See Iraq Talks as Good ‘First Step’

[Purveyor]

WASHINGTON, March 11 — Both American and Iranian diplomats today cautiously welcomed as an important “first step” the outcome of a regional meeting on the violence in Iraq, which brought a rare face-to-face encounter between the two sides.

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“I did talk to the Iranian across the table, and also I shook hands with him and talked two minutes or so with him,” he said in an interview with the NBC News program “Meet the Press” that was broadcast today. “But most of the exchanges were across the table, dealing with Iraq issues.” He said there were “no direct bilateral substantive talks other than shaking hands.”

In Tehran, an Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman called the conference a constructive “first step” in promoting Iraqi stability. The spokesman, Mohammad Ali Hosseini, said that his country hoped a proposed follow-up meeting would be successful, The Associated Press reported.

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Given the depth of tensions, the Iraqis’ greatest achievement seemed to be to get so many countries with frosty relations to sit in the same room. Delegations were also present from other neighboring nations, and from Bahrain, Egypt, Russia, France, Britain, China, the United Nations, the Islamic Conference and the Arab League.

Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki of Iraq opened the much-anticipated conference with a plea to Iraq’s neighbors to back his efforts to control the violence engulfing the country.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/11/world/middleeast/11cnd-policy.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print