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BAGHDAD – Mahmoud Ahmadinejad arrived in Baghdad for the first-ever visit by an Iranian president to Iraq, waving as he stepped off his plane to be greeted by representatives of a nation that was once Iran’s bitter enemy.
The visit gives Ahmadinejad a chance to highlight the improved relationship his nation has with post-Saddam Hussein Iraq while also serving as an act of defiance toward the U.S., which accuses Iran of aiding Shiite extremists in Iraq.
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Upon Ahmadinejad’s arrival, the group piled into a military convoy headed for a meeting at Iraqi President Jalal Talabani’s residence.
Security was tight along the airport road, once among the most dangerous in this war-torn city, with Iraqi army patrols stationed every 100 yards or so. The U.S. has said it would not be involved in providing security for Ahmadinejad’s visit.
Ahmadinejad is scheduled to meet not only with Talabani but also Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, both of whom have made official visits to Iran since taking office. Talabani’s headquarters are located right across the Tigris River from the mammoth new U.S. Embassy in the fortified Green Zone.
Jon Alterman, head of the Middle East program at Washington’s Center for Strategic and International Studies , said the visit sends a “clear message to Iraqis that the Iranian influence in the country is significant and enduring.”
President Bush denied that Ahmadinejad’s visit undermined U.S. efforts to isolate Tehran but had some advice for what al-Maliki should say to the Iranian leader. “He’s a neighbor. And the message needs to be, quit sending in sophisticated equipment that’s killing our citizens.”
BAGHDAD — It’s a damning indication of how poorly things have gone for the United States during its five-year misadventure in Iraq that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad can drive in broad daylight though this war-ravaged city and spend the night at the presidential palace, but George W. Bush can’t.
Mr. Ahmadinejad was greeted with lavish ceremony yesterday as he became the first Iranian President to visit Baghdad, a trip some said reflected Iran’s great and growing power in Iraq and how severely the U.S. effort to remake Iraq into a Western-friendly democracy has gone awry.
Nearly 4,000 American soldiers have died since the war began in 2003, but Iraq’s U.S.-backed government warmly welcomed Washington’s No. 1 enemy with flowers and a band.
Apparently ignoring repeated U.S. charges that Iran is destabilizing his country, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani smiled broadly as he greeted Mr. Ahmadinejad outside his palace. Hailing a new era in ties between their states, the two men clasped hands and exchanged traditional kisses on the cheeks before walking together down a red carpet to review an honour guard as a military band played the two national anthems.
Unlike Mr. Bush’s cloak-and-dagger visits here – fly-in trips to heavily guarded U.S. military bases that only last a few hours, often with no advance notice given to even the Iraqi government – Mr. Ahmadinejad’s schedule was announced days earlier. He spent last night at Mr. Talabani’s palace, across the Tigris River from the fortified Green Zone that houses the massive new U.S. embassy.
“We tell Mr. Bush that accusing others without evidence will increase the problems in the region and will not solve them,” Mr. Ahmadinejad said at a press conference alongside Mr. al-Maliki. “The Americans have to understand the facts of the region. The Iraqi people do not like America.”
BLOODY IRAN-IRAQ WAR LEFT ONE MILLION DEAD
Yesterday’s visit was even more significant given the acrimonious history between Iran and Iraq, which fought a long and bloody war from 1980 to 1988 that left upwards of a million people dead and saw the first battlefield use of chemical weapons since the First World War. The United States backed Iraq, which was ruled at the time by Saddam Hussein, with weapons and money during the war.
The eventual U.S. decision to depose Mr. Hussein, a Sunni dictator, set off a chain reaction that has seen Iraq’s once-oppressed Shia majority rise to power, setting off the brutal civil conflict between the country’s Sunni and Shia communities.
Joost Hiltermann, a regional analyst with the Brussels-based International Crisis Group, noted that the groups now in power in Iraq, including key Shia and Kurdish political factions, are some of same groups that allied themselves with Tehran during the conflict while the United States was supporting Mr. Hussein. Many Iraqi Shia leaders lived in Iran during the war, while Mr. Talabani, a Sunni Kurd, speaks fluent Farsi.
“There was always a contradiction in American policy in Iraq,” he said. “If you want to turn Iraq into a democracy, you’re going to bring Iran’s friends to power.
“If people in Washington are surprised [at the reception for Mr. Ahmadinejad] it’s because they didn’t understand what they were getting into.”
Ahmadinejad also said “Security for Iraq is security for Iran, and this does not suit the enemy because they do not want stability for the region, so they can continue their meddling in its affairs and justify the presence of its military” meaning we all know the US wants to occupy the middle of the Middle East indefinitely, and use Iraq as a base for subjugating surrounding nations by destabilization techniques.
It was a no-brainer that Iran would eventually make contact with the southern Iraqi Shiite and forge a close and influential relationship. Apparently the Department of Defense Neocons, apart from their miscalculating or not bothering to think ahead militarily, also lacked the geopolitical knowledge to understand that the Shiites had closer bonds with Iran than with Sunni Iraq.
So the Iraq misadventure has now strengthed Iran increasing its role as a major player in the Middle East.
Since Iraq has several Shi’a shrines, there has always been a connection there, this is not a new thing. The mullahs of Iraq have withdrawn to Iran for decades, once Saddam declared Iraq a secular state. Nothing new here. But it’s the incompetence of Cheney policy that has given Iran the appearance of more “power” and influence in the Middle East. It is a very large, wealthy and populous nation relative to the other states in the region, and always has had a huge influence. Persia has existed since 500 BC.
envisioned further excursions into Syria and Iran following the cakewalk. Generals Wolfowitz and Feith were going to get themselves airdropped into Damascus and Tehran, respectively.
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The Bush administration is blocking an inquiry into the delay-plagued construction of the $736m US embassy in Baghdad, a senior Democrat in Congress said today.
Henry Waxman, who is chairman of the oversight committee in the House of Representatives, asked US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice to explain why her department certified the embassy as “substantially completed” in December despite inspections that reveal continued deficiencies in the facility’s water, fire alarm and kitchen systems.
The Baghdad embassy, which stands to become the largest US diplomatic facility in the world, had an original opening date of mid-2007. But the project stalled amid ballooning cost estimates as well as charges of corruption and shoddy work by the private contracting company overseeing the project.
In addition, two US state department employees who worked on the embassy project are now under criminal investigation. Waxman urged Rice to release subpoenaed documents related to the Baghdad embassy project next week or risk being forced to do so.
“It appears that the state department is concealing from Congress basic information about the status of the embassy project and the activities of the individuals and contractors involved,” Waxman wrote to Rice. “This continued intransigence is inappropriate.”
The private construction company, First Kuwaiti General Trading & Contracting, declined repeatedly to provide safety inspectors with reports on fire protection systems at the embassy, according to reports released by Waxman. First Kuwaiti, based in Kuwait, remains the target of a separate US criminal probe into allegations of labour trafficking.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."
You mean Ahmadinejad was greeeted with music, flowers, and kisses? Being greeeted in Iraq with music, flowers, and kisses; haven’t I heard that somewhere before?
Nice.
AG