Middle East

Iraqi leader warns Iran of terror threat

(AP)
Updated: 2007-04-30 15:36

"Iran should attend the conference, actively and powerfully," Boroojerdi was quoted as saying by Iran's official Islamic Republic News Agency.

Iraq's other neighbors as well as Egypt, Bahrain and representatives of the five permanent UN Security Council members have also agreed to attend the meeting.

Apart from security issues, the US and Iraq hope the conference will produce an agreement to forgive Iraq's huge debts and offer financial assistance in return for an Iraqi pledge to implement political and economic reforms.

But Iraq's Arab neighbors are expected to demand that the Baghdad government, dominated by Shiites and Kurds, do more to reach out to its own disgruntled Sunni Arabs before they pledge substantial aid.

On Sunday, President Bush called Iraq's Sunni vice president, Tariq al-Hashimi, to discuss the importance of the reconciliation process and the need for all Iraqi parties to work together to stabilize the country, according to Gordon Johndroe, a spokesman for the White House National Security Council.

The Iraqis, for their part, were anxious for the Iranians to attend to give them leverage against their Sunni-dominated neighbors and to help press their case that Sunni extremists, including al-Qaida, pose the gravest threat to stability.

The US military said Monday that a roadside bomb killed three Multi-National Division-Baghdad soldiers and wounded another while they were on a combat patrol Sunday in eastern Baghdad. An Iraqi interpreter also was killed in the attack.

Another Multi-National Division-Baghdad soldier on a combat patrol was killed by small arms fire in eastern Baghdad Saturday, the military said in a separate statement.

The deaths raised to at least 103 American troops who have died in Iraq as April draws to a close, making it the deadliest month since December, when 112 Americans died.

Separately, Britain said one of its soldiers was shot to death Sunday while on patrol in Basra. The death brings to 146 the number of British troops killed in Iraq since the 2003 invasion - 12 of them this month.

American troops also detained 72 suspected insurgents and seized nitric acid and other bomb-making materials during raids Sunday targeting al-Qaida in Iraq in Anbar province, a Sunni insurgent stronghold west of the capital, and Salahuddin province, a volatile Sunni area northwest of the capital, the US military said.

Elsewhere in Iraq, the death toll from a suicide car bomb attack in the Shiite holy city of Karbala rose to 68 as residents dug through the debris of heavily damaged shops.