Agence France-Presse,
BAGHDAD (AFP): Iraq on Sunday lashed out at its neighbours for interfering in its internal affairs and warned that violence they were stoking in the war-ravaged country could engulf the entire region.
“Many countries say they support Iraq's stability and integrity, but at the same time are interfering in a number of different ways,” Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said at the end of the high-profile Baghdad Conference.
Declining to elaborate, he did however note that Iran's shelling of Iraq's northern Kurdish region was among issues affecting regional stability.
“It does not help the atmosphere and we don't want our relations to be affected by this,” he said, adding that the shelling was “disproportionate” to the threat posed by Kurdish guerrilla groups in the region.
Zebari had earlier told delegates attending the one-day conference in the Iraqi capital that Iraq wanted “practical contribution in controlling the borders and preventing infiltrators like terrorists and killers crossing into Iraq.” Failure to do so would “expose them (neighbours) to its dangers.”
In a short but hard-hitting speech he pulled no punches.
“We need to say… those interfering in Iraq's affairs must lay their hands off this nation and leave it to decide its destiny away from terrorism,” Zebari said.
Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki opened the conference with a warning that the entire region could be subjected to the “terrorism” being experienced by Iraq.
The neighbours, he said, must work “seriously” to prevent this happening.
The embattled premier warned that “evil forces” such as Al-Qaeda wanted to strike the region and they do “not stop at the border of one country.”
“We have to stand united and face this evil,” Maliki said, adding that Baghdad was determined to return the situation in Iraq back to normal.
The Baghdad Conference was attended by Iraq's neighbours, including Iran, and delegates from the G8 countries as well as the five permanent members of the UN Security Council.
It was called to thrash out common strategies to end Iraq's sectarian violence, to find ways to fuel the country's energy needs and to address the refugee crisis triggered by the volatile security situation.
The meeting comes a day before leading US officials in Iraq begin testifying before Congress in Washington on progress in the war-torn country.
Iraqi security officials, meanwhile, said 15 people, including five policemen and five soldiers were killed in separate attacks in the country on Sunday.
Washington repeatedly accuses Iraq's former foe Iran and its western neighbour Syria of fomenting violence in the country.
The US military accuses Tehran-linked groups of funding, arming and training extremists to fight US troops in Iraq, while it says Syria does not do enough to crack down on foreign fighters slipping through its porous border to fight in Iraq.
Tehran and Damascus deny the charges.
Iran was represented by Deputy Foreign Minister Mohammed Reza Baqeri who said the day's negotiations had been “successful.”
“It was an important meeting and was evidence that the Iraqi government can hold such a big meeting. It showed that the security situation in Baghdad is better than it was during the first meeting” in March, he said.
The United States was represented by senior embassy official Patricia Butenis in the absence of Ambassador Ryan Crocker, one of the officials to report to Congress this week.
“The conference is an important demonstration of the Iraqi government's desire to work with its neighbors as it pursues political and economic progress,” a US embassy statement said.
The focus of the conference was on commitments made at the first groundbreaking conference on March 10 and at a similar meeting held in Egypt in May.
After the opening session, delegates split into the three working groups set up after the Sharm el-Sheikh meeting — dealing with security, the plight of four million Iraqis displaced internally or who have fled to Jordan and Syria, and Iraq's energy crisis.
The committees came up with firm proposals and these would be put before the next ministerial-level meeting, slated for Istanbul on October 31 and November 1, foreign minister Zebari said.
