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US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice leaves for the Middle East hoping to increase pressure on Iran, which Washington accuses of destabilizing Iraq.
Rice departs Friday evening for talks Saturday and Sunday in Israel and the Palestinian territories, before traveling to Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. She will wrap up her tour in Berlin and London before returning to Washington on January 19.
The focus on Iran could overshadow efforts to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, not the first time the issue has received a lower priority during President George W. Bush's tenure.
The top US diplomat had promised last month to redouble efforts to revive the Mideast peace process and Bush conveyed the same message last week to German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
But on the eve of her departure, Rice said the main goal of her trip was to counter Iranian influence and promote the Bush administration's new strategy in Iraq, which includes the deployment of an extra 21,500 US troops, bolstering reconstruction aid and sending Patriot missile defense systems to the region to protect moderate Arab allies.
“What we are … looking at is the need to solidify the consensus, the interest of these states that all fear Iran's moves in the region, fear the regional aggression of Iran,” Rice said.
“I don't want to speculate on what kinds of operations the United States may be engaged in, but I think you will see that the United States is not going to simply stand idly by and let these activities continue,” she said.
Rice's warning coincided with a US operation in the northern Iraqi city of Arbil, where the American military detained six Iranians. Tehran denounced the action as an attack on one of its consulates.
With tension between the United States and Iran mounting, Washington also announced Thursday it had stepped up the US military presence in the region, with two aircraft carrier battle groups due to stay in the Gulf for several months.
It was the first time Washington had moved two carriers to the region since 2003, when the United States invaded Iraq, a US military official said.
Rice told lawmakers in Congress her trip “will focus heavily on rallying the support of those responsible Arab states to support the government of Iraq, to support what needs to be done there, to support, of course, also Lebanon and the moderate Palestinians.”
Her visit to Kuwait will include a meeting with foreign ministers from the Gulf states of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Qatar and Bahrain, as well as Egypt and Jordan. Rice, seeking to counter Iran's role in the region, has met with the same Arab governments three times since September, in New York, Cairo and Jordan.
“I do believe that the states of the Gulf and the Egyptians and the Jordanians understand increasingly that if they are to resist as much they want to, if they are to resist Iranian influence or increases in Iranian influence in the Middle East, something that they fear quite greatly, then it is going to require support for Iraq,” Rice said.
“Because Iraq can either be a barrier to further Iranian influence or it can become a bridge if it is not dealt with effectively.”
With progress unlikely in Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations, a meeting of the Middle East Quartet — the European Union, the United States, Russia and the United Nations — scheduled for the end of January in Paris has been postponed due to scheduling conflicts, according to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.
State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said Rice's trip would be “more about laying the foundations for potential future actions than actually coming to closure on any particular agreements.”
