Rice Hopes Iran Ready to Support Stable, Democratic Iraq

David Gollust, VOA News:

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who may meet Iranian representatives at a Brussels meeting on Iraq later this month, says she hopes Iran is ready to support stability and democracy in Iraq rather than interfering in its affairs. Ms. Rice discussed the upcoming meeting Thursday with European Union officials. READ MORE

Iran has been invited to the ministerial-level level conference on Iraq's future June 22 co-sponsored by the United States and European Union.

If Iran does attend, it would not be the first time that the two countries have participated in meetings on Iraq despite the absence of formal relations between Washington and Tehran.

At a news conference with European Union officials capping a day-long political dialogue, Secretary Rice said Iran is a country out of step with the rest of the Middle East with its support for Palestinian rejectionist factions, the Hezbollah militia in Lebanon, and with its nuclear program.

But she said the United States understands that Iran is Iraq's neighbor and said she hopes its influence in that country will be helpful rather than destabilizing.

"We would like nothing better than for Iran to be devoted to a stable Iraq in which Iran is not trying to interfere in Iraq's internal affairs, but rather trying to support the development of a stable and democratic Iraq. And I'll just make one other point about that, which is that I have never believed that the Iraqi people, having thrown off the yoke of Saddam Hussein, now wish to subject themselves to the rule of the Guardian Council of Iran," she said

Ms. Rice noted that the Guardian Council, a panel of clerics and jurists which has final say over Iranian legislative and electoral affairs, had summarily dismissed hundreds of would-be candidates in upcoming elections there. She said Iranian internal developments are not, as she put it, a very pretty picture. ...