Iran-Iraq-US Committee Starts Work

A trilateral committee formed by representatives of Iran, US and Iraq started its meeting Monday morning, Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Seyed Mohammad Ali Hosseini said. Hosseini said that the committee is comprised of deputy head of the Iranian delegation Amir Abdollahian and his US counterpart as well as an Iraqi deputy minister.

The meeting is also attended by Iraqi deputy interior minister, deputy foreign minister, security advisor of Iraq’s ministry of defense and political advisor to prime minister.

Hosseini also said during his weekly press conference on Sunday that the committee would continue security issues discussed earlier by the two Iranian and US delegations.

The two arch foes Tehran and Washington, which cut diplomatic ties shortly after Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution, held two rounds of rare talks in Baghdad in May and July to find ways to improve security in Iraq.

In the second round of talks, held on July 24 in Baghdad, representatives from the US, Iran and Iraq agreed to establish a trilateral committee to investigate issues such as support for militias and Al-Qaeda in Iraq.

The first round of talks between Tehran and Washington on May 28, which melted the icy relations of the two states after 28 years, was held at ambassadorial level, where Iran’s Hassan Kazemi Qomi and United States’ Ryan Crocker discussed Iraq’s issues, specially the underlying causes of current insecurities in that country.

During the meeting which was held at the home of Iraq’s Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, the Iranian and US delegations did not discuss any bilateral issues and focused merely on Iraq’s problems.