The deteriorating situation in Iraq was likely to dominate the third International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) regional security summit, the Manama Dialogue, that was to open in Bahrain later Friday. The meeting, which comes just two-days after the 10-member bipartisan Iraq Study Group presented their 79 recommendations to improve the Iraq situation and begin a US withdrawal, was to be attended by high-level representatives from more than 20 countries, including Iran, Iraq, and the US.
Manama- The deteriorating situation in Iraq was likely to dominate the third International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) regional security summit, the Manama Dialogue, that was to open in Bahrain later Friday. The meeting, which comes just two-days after the 10-member bipartisan Iraq Study Group presented their 79 recommendations to improve the Iraq situation and begin a US withdrawal, was to be attended by high-level representatives from more than 20 countries, including Iran, Iraq, and the US.
One of the key ISG report recommendations to the Bush administration was for the US to engage Iran and Syria in direct talks, as part of an aggressive regional diplomacy initiative, in an effort to reduce the sectarian violence in Iraq.
However, the administration rejected that recommendation.
Nonetheless, both sides will get a chance to state their position as the US and Iran were set to address the two and half day meeting on Saturday.
US Ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, and Iran's Minister for Foreign affairs, Manouchehr Mottaki, were set to be delivering back- to-back speeches regarding the US role and the region, and the regional security perceptions.
Iraq's foreign minister, Hoshyar Zebari, was also expected to address the meeting following Mottaki's speech.
What makes this meeting important is that it brings together not only the region, but extra-regional powers that have interests in this part of the world, IISS-US Executive Director Adam Ward told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.
In strategic and security terms the Gulf region and wider Middle East are absolutely essential to everybody's thinking and the only way the problems of the region are going to be effectively addressed is if regional powers and extra-regional stake holders all come together, he said.
This year's meeting in Manama, in which some 200 delegates are participating, also has representatives from Turkey, India, Japan, and China.
Ward added that issues concerning nuclear proliferation, the insurgency in Iraq, terrorism, the Arab-Israeli conflict, and functional issues on how states in the region can best address them to also be central to the meeting.
IISS consulting senior fellow for the Middle East, Toby Dodge, presented a more bleak picture of the situation in Iraq, saying that the efforts now focus on containing the civil war there and preventing it from spilling into neighbouring countries.
Dodge, who said that Iran and Syria were using the insurgents as leverage against the US, also pointed out that the sectarian violence was bound to occur, citing the collapse of the state as the main driving force for that.
He also questioned how much impact the ISG report would have on the Iraqi government by setting certain conditions for them to meet.
One of the main problems of the Iraq Study Group report is that the Iraqi government could not carry out its recommendations. It is not that they do not want to, but they do not have the ability to do it, Dodge said.
If the US pulled out, at worst they would leave Iraq in a civil war situation with greater number of troops beyond the border in neighbouring countries trying to stop the spread of that instability, he said.
Dodge, however, ruled out that the war in Iraq would lead to a larger regional war despite the tension from the ongoing Arab-Israeli conflict.
He foresaw a situation where the US and UN would put the regional states neighbouring Iraq in a framework where they would cooperate to limit the problems after the US pull out, he said.
Both Ward and Dodge agreed that al-Qaeda remained a long-term challenge for the West.
Al-Qaeda lost a physical base from which to conduct planning that it had in Afghanistan, so there is no single unitary base from which they operate, said Ward.
At the same time terrorism experts say that al-Qaeda had developed into something much more virtual, providing encouragement, with its leadership making public statements from time to time.
But, it was not in a position to have command and control.
Dodge said that Iraq has been a huge success for al-Qaeda, allowing them to show that the US can be weakened.
Saudi Arabia's Chief of General Intelligence, Prince Muqrin Bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, was set to deliver the keynote address at the start of the summit.
The London-based IISS that was established in 1958 by a group of individuals interested in maintaining civilized international relations in the nuclear age is one the worlds leading think-tanks on political-military conflict, with offices in the US and in Singapore.
