Pat Dollard | Young Americans

MANAMA, Bahrain: The U.S. secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, pressed Arab nations for financial and political support for Iraq on Monday and said Baghdad’s neighbors had taken a “good step forward” by pledging to do more to include the country in regional affairs.

Sheik Khalid bin Ahmed al-Khalifa, the foreign minister of Bahrain, said the Iraqi government had answered many of its neighbors’ concerns, especially about the political situation, at the meetings among Gulf states here. Khalifa said Iraq would now be included in such meetings as a matter of course.

“That’s a very good step forward for the reintegration of Iraq into regional affairs,” Rice said at a news conference, with Khalifa at her side.

Rice is trying to make the case that much has changed inside Iraq in the last year, owing partly to the additional U.S. troops and also to what she says is growing political cohesion among Iraq’s sectarian and ethnic factions. “Adjustments are going to have to be made” in the way Arab states regard Iraq, she said.

The United States has tried for years to rally Arab support for an Iraq after Saddam Hussein, both for the lift that regional acceptance would give a fledgling democracy and as a bulwark against spreading Iranian influence in Iraq and elsewhere.

Arab diplomats say they want to foster long-term stability in Iraq five years after a U.S.-led invasion and occupation many of them opposed, but they see little sign that the Shiite-led Iraq government will fully include Sunni Muslims in political power and oil wealth. Arab states also privately note that with fewer than 10 months left in office, the administration of President George W. Bush has declining leverage over Arab states and the Iraqi government.

Rice is on a three-day trip to the Middle East. On Sunday, she visited Baghdad, where she said she was encouraged about progress.

The meetings Monday brought no announcements of new forgiveness of Iraq’s debt. The United States has canceled all of Iraqi’s prewar debt of $4.1 billion and other primarily non-Arab members have agreed to cancel 80 percent. Numerous Arab creditors, including Saudi Arabia, have pledged to help Iraq recover financially by forgiving debt, but follow-through has been slow. Much of Iraq’s remaining $67 billion in debt is owed to Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates and Qatar.

“The terms have long been known. It’s just a matter of getting the negotiations done,” Rice said after her meetings with the Arab diplomats.

A larger gathering of Arab states and Iraq’s international backers is planned for Tuesday in Kuwait. Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki of Iraq, flying to Kuwait on Monday, said he would speak frankly to Arab diplomats.

“There are countries that support the political process and are opening embassies here. We need the others to open embassies here, too,” he said, referring to unfulfilled pledges from Saudi Arabia and Bahrain.

Rice signed an agreement Monday with the United Arab Emirates for cooperation as the oil-rich Gulf federation works to develop civilian nuclear power, and was holding private talks with Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister.

Iran, which like Iraq has a Shiite majority, is the subtext of two days of meetings Rice is attending. She has been making the case that Iraq is an Arab state, with an Arab identity that deserves solidarity from its neighbors, most of which have majority Sunni populations.

The Bush administration is arguing that although Iran has pull inside Iraq, Sunni states nervous about Iran’s spreading influence in the Middle East should not use that as an excuse to give Iraq the cold shoulder.

Khalifa sought to play down Iran’s influence in Iraq. “We have never seen the Iraqi government as an arm of Iran,” he said at the news conference Monday.

A senior State Department official later said the Bahrain session was notable for the warm reception given to Iraq’s foreign minister, Hoshyar Zebari, and for the fact that the other diplomats seemed comfortable discussing sensitive subjects, including the political crisis in Lebanon, in Zebari’s presence.

“If they thought he was an Iranian agent, they never would have let him in on those conversations,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe a closed-door

(IHT)