Meeting gets testy between U.S., Iran

BAGHDAD – U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker chided his Iranian counterpart at a rare and heated meeting Tuesday, saying Iran increasingly had meddled in Iraq since the pair’s first encounter earlier this year.

But he said the United States, Iran and Iraq agreed to set up a security committee to devise ways to help curb the ongoing violence in Iraq.

Iraqi officials heralded the move as the first concrete step to emerge from talks that began May 28, ending an official diplomatic freeze between the United States and Iran of nearly 30 years. But Crocker said the results that would count would be the ones on the ground.

“The fact is, as we made very clear in today’s talks, that over the roughly two months we have actually seen militia-related activities that can be attributed to Iranian support go up and not down,” Crocker said at a news briefing after the meeting.

A spokesman for the Iranian Foreign Ministry countered that “false accusations and propaganda” would not help the negotiations.

“It is crystal clear that the main objective behind repetition of such baseless accusations against Iran is to pursue the U.S. propaganda fuss and psychological warfare against the country,” Mohammed-Ali Hosseini told reporters in Iran.

The meeting came on a day when a suicide bomber in a tow truck killed at least 25 people and injured scores more in Hillah, a city about 60 miles south of Baghdad. They were among at least 55 people killed or found slain in bomb blasts, mortar fire and shootings across Iraq. The suicide bomber pulled up between two minibuses packed with passengers in a busy commercial district, police at the scene said. The blast collapsed a ceiling inside a nearby maternity hospital, ripped through shops and torched more than a dozen vehicles.

The session took place amid continuing tension between Washington and Tehran over Iran’s nuclear enrichment program and detainees held by both countries. Those issues, however, were not discussed. Only the question of Iraq’s security was on the table.

Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshiyar Zebari termed the daylong talks, which he led at Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s office in the fortified Green Zone, as “very challenging.”

Crocker repeated U.S. accusations that Iran is providing weapons, training and other support to Shiite and Sunni Muslim militants fighting in Iraq, including sophisticated bombs able to penetrate heavily fortified vehicles. U.S. officials also say many of the rockets aimed at the Green Zone, home to the U.S. Embassy and Iraqi government offices, come from Iran.

“I was as clear as I could be with the Iranians that this effort, this discussion has to be measured in results, not in principles or promises, and that thus far the results on the ground are not encouraging,” Crocker said.