security next month in Baghdad, the foreign ministry said Thursday, while bombings and mortar attacks tore through Shiite and Sunni neighborhoods in the capital, killing at least 17 people. The Iraqi Foreign Ministry official did not give a specific date for the meeting but said it was planned for March and would be the tenth held by Iraq's neighbors but the first to take place in the Iraqi capital. The last such meeting was held in July in Iran.
The government, meanwhile, said it would consider any attack against U.S. forces in this country as an assault against Iraq but also wants good relations with its big eastern neighbor, Iran, underscoring the delicate balance it faces in keeping the rivalry between the two countries from spilling over its borders.
Spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh's comments came amid rising tensions between the United States and Iran, following the arrest of five Iranians in the northern Iraqi city of Irbil and the Jan. 20 attack to the south in Karbala in which four American soldiers were kidnapped and slain. A fifth was killed in the raid.
U.S. Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns said there was a "political and moral difference" between what the United States and the Iranians are doing in Iraq, reiterating allegations that Tehran has been supporting Shiite militias that have been blamed for much of the recent sectarian violence in Iraq.
"There's been increased evidence over that time that Iran has given this kind of assistance to the Shia insurgency groups in southern Iraq. They've attacked British soldiers near Basra, and they've now begun to mount those operations throughout the country, at least in the Baghdad region as well," he said Thursday in an interview with NPR.
Offering the first indication of the war's toll on regular Iraqs this year, a health ministry official said 1,990 civilians had been killed in violence during January, a more than three-fold increase from the 548 civilians reported killed by the ministry in the same month last year. Counts kept by other groups, including the United Nations, have listed far higher numbers.
The official, who declined to be identified because he was not authorized to release the figures, said 1,936 civilians also had been wounded according to the figures, which were compiled from daily reports sent by morgues and hospitals nationwide.
Figures provided by the defense and interior ministries also showed that 100 Iraqi security forces were killed in January, while 593 insurgents were killed and 1,926 detained.
Terms of use