MAHMOUD Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, is to make a landmark visit to Baghdad for talks with Nuri al-Maliki, the Iraqi prime minister, and other officials.
The visit, on 2 and 3 March, will be the first by the president of the Islamic Republic, which is at loggerheads with many in the West over the causes of violence in Iraq as well as Tehran's nuclear programme.
Washington and London accuse Iran
of helping Shiite militias in Iraq, by giving them training and weapons, including armour-piercing bombs known as explosively formed penetrators that have killed US and British troops. Tehran denies the charges.
Iran, a predominantly Shiite Muslim country, and Iraq fought an eight-year war in the 1980s in which hundreds of thousands were killed. Ties have improved since Saddam Hussein, a Sunni Arab, was ousted in the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 and a Shiite Muslim-led government came to power in Baghdad. Both Mr Maliki and Jalal Talabani, the Iraqi president, have visited Iran.
Ali al-Dabbagh, a spokesman for the Iraqi government, said "(Mr Ahmadinejad's visit] is significant in the sense that Iraq wants to have good relations with Iran (but] there should be no interference in Iraq's internal affairs."
He said Iran should respect Iraq's right to have relations with the countries it chose to.
Some analysts have said the visit will annoy Washington, but the White House yesterday voiced support for the trip, so long as Iran stopped supporting militias in Iraq – Mr Ahmadinejad often speaks out against the US military presence in Iraq.
"We want Iran and Iraq to have good relations," Gordon Johndroe, a White House spokesman, said. "The fastest way for that to happen is for Iran to stop supporting extremists in Iraq who kill innocent Iraqis and Americans."
A Tehran-based analyst, who did not want to be named, said the visit would be a setback to Washington's efforts to isolate Iran. "It will go against American propaganda against Iran," he said.
"(The Americans] are saying Iraqi leaders are not happy with Iranian interference and provocation inside Iraq. This visit will show Iraqi leaders are not really concerned with an Iranian threat. They are not openly opposing the Iranian position."
The full article contains 383 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
