Iran and Iraq will sign a deal in the next few days to build a pipeline that would transfer crude from southern Iraqi oilfields to refineries in Iran, a senior Iranian official said yesterday.

Iran’s envoy at a conference on Iraq security in the Syrian capital denied accusations by the United States that Teheran is fueling Iraq’s violence.

Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari assessed the trilateral meetings between Iran, Iraq and the US as positive, and further called on Tehran and Washington to continue the talks.