Iran to attend conference on Iraq

TEHRAN, Iran --Iran confirmed it will take part in an international conference alongside the United States in Baghdad on Saturday, a gathering Iraq hopes will break the ice between the bitter rivals to help end its bloody conflict.

In a sign of how difficult it will be resolve the differences separating the various sides, the conference of Iraq's neighbors, the United States and the U.N. Security Council powers will be attended by officials on the level of deputy foreign minister. A hoped-for session of higher level diplomats has been postponed until later.

The United States has accused Iran of backing anti-U.S. Shiite militants in Iraq, has detained Iranian officials there and has angered Tehran by beefing up its military presence in the Persian Gulf. Washington is also pushing for new sanctions on Iran over its nuclear program.

On the Iranian side, Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said Wednesday that his country hoped "the conference will bring forward the end of the presence of foreign forces" in Iraq -- reiterating Tehran's stance that U.S. troops should withdraw.

Another top goal of Washington and Baghdad also faces obstacles: rallying mainly Sunni Arab nations behind Iraq's Shiite-led government. An Arab League official said Wednesday that Arab delegates will push for a change in the Iraqi government to give minority Sunnis a greater share of power.

The conference will be the first time American and Iranian officials sit together in more than two years -- a dramatic change in the Bush administration's refusal to engage Tehran over the war in Iraq. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has said the conference could lead to a meeting of the participants' foreign ministers and top diplomats as soon as April.

"Our hope is that this will be an icebreaking attempt for maybe holding other meetings in the future. We want Iraq to be a unifying issue instead of being a divisive issue," Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said in Baghdad.

The United States will be represented at the session by Rice's senior adviser on Iraq, David Satterfield, and the outgoing U.S. ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad. Iran's delegation will be led by Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi.

Neither side has said whether it will hold direct talks on the sidelines of the gathering. The conference is to be held at the Iraqi Foreign Ministry building, just outside the heavily fortified Green Zone, where the Iraqi government and U.S. Embassy are based.

While Washington announced its participation more than a week ago, Tehran had held off until Wednesday an announcement that it would attend.

"We hope the conference will result in sending a clear message that the countries of the region are standing alongside the government and nation of Iraq," Mottaki told a news conference.

Iraq has not said who will represent it at the meeting, but its delegation is likely to be headed by Zebari or one of his deputies.

The conference puts Baghdad in a curious position between its top allies, the United States and Iran. The Shiite and Kurdish parties that dominate Shiite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's ruling coalition all have close ties to Tehran.

The last time U.S. and Iranian envoys met in public was in late 2004 at a meeting of 20 nations in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheik to discuss Iraq's future. Then-Secretary of State Colin Powell and his Iranian counterpart, Kamal Kharrazi, did not hold formal talks, but Egypt sat the two officials next to one another at a dinner. Powell said the two mostly had "polite dinner conversation."

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AP correspondent Salah Nasrawi in Cairo contributed to this report.