US, Iran hold Iraq security talks

The United States and Iran have held a frank first meeting of a new committee set up to seek an end to Iraq's sectarian violence, which Washington accuses Tehran of fuelling.
Hours before the diplomats met, a truck bomber in a crowded residential area killed at least 33 people in their homes. Establishing the security sub-committee has been the main achievement so far of new face-to-face contacts between Washington and Tehran - enemies who have had no diplomatic ties for almost 30 years but were driven to the negotiating table by the threat of all-out civil war in Iraq. "It is an established channel of communication and we will see in the future as to whether or not it is a useful channel of communication," US State Department spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters in Washington.


A US embassy official said ambassador Ryan Crocker and his Iranian counterpart Hassan Kazemi-Qomi met Iraq's national security adviser Mowaffak al-Rubaie for two hours in Rubaie's office to go over what the committee had discussed. The United States says Iran is fomenting unrest in Iraq by supporting Shi'ite militias and supplying weapons such as armour-piercing bombs used to kill US troops. Iran denies it is responsible for violence and blames the United States for unleashing sectarian strife after its 2003 invasion. A US military spokesman said that more than 70 per cent of attacks on US troops in Baghdad in July were carried out by Shi'ite militias. "Of that figure we can say some of them have had Iranian training," the spokesman said. Neither Tehran nor Washington have said precisely what they hope to achieve at the talks, which were hosted by Iraqi officials in Baghdad and led by Marcie Ries, a senior diplomat at the US embassy, and Amir Abdollahian, the deputy head of Iran's mission. After the talks, which lasted four hours, the US embassy official said they were "frank and serious, and focused as agreed on security problems in Iraq" and they would continue at a date to be agreed later. The two countries also have long-running feuds over other issues such as Iran's nuclear program, but officials say they have not been raised in the Iraq talks. A huge truck bomb flattened houses in a residential neighbourhood in the northern Iraqi town of Tal Afar in the early morning. A doctor at the town's main hospital said 33 people had been killed and 52 injured. Among the dead were 16 women and many children, he said. Rescue workers sifted through rubble in an attempt to find survivors from the attack. "This indiscriminate violence, meant to reverse progress and turn Iraqis against one another, again shows the nature of this barbaric enemy," the US military said in a statement. In eastern Baghdad, six people died and nine were wounded when street cleaners were hit by a bomb hidden in a rubbish bin in the early morning. Another bomb on a minibus killed two. Overnight, police in the town of Baquba - capital of Diyala province, where US and Iraqi forces have mounted an offensive against insurgents over the past several weeks - found 60 decomposing corpses dumped in tall grass. Washington has increased pressure on Iraq's leaders, accusing them of failing to make political progress. On Sunday, US Defence Secretary Robert Gates criticised Iraq's parliament for going on recess last week without passing laws Washington considers vital for ending sectarian violence. Iraqi politicians are expected to hold talks soon to restore a unity cabinet which was designed to reduce sectarian strife by including members of all communities but which hit a crisis last week when the main Sunni Arab group pulled out.