Mon Mar 12, 10:04 AM ET
US President George W. Bush called on Iran and Syria Sunday to follow up positive statements with concrete action after an international conference on Iraq, urging the two governments to stop the flow of weapons and foreign fighters into Iraq.
"If they really want to help stabilize Iraq there are things for them to do, such as cutting off weapon flows and/or the flow of suicide bombers into Iraq," Bush told reporters during a visit to Colombia.
"There's all kinds of ways to measure whether they're serious about the words they utter," Bush said.
"We of course welcome those words. Those are nice statements. And now they can act on them."
Bush spoke a day after Iraq's neighbors and world powers held a conference on Iraq in Baghdad, which included representatives from Washington's arch-foes Syria and Iran.
The US administration has repeatedly accused Iran of arming militias in Iraq and charged Syria has failed to prevent foreign fighters from crossing its border into Iraq. Both countries have denied the accusations and called for the US military to withdraw from the country.
Bush, who appeared alongside Colombian President Alvaro Uribe as part of a Latin American tour, added: "I am the kind a person that likes people to say something and do it, then we react."
The 16-nation conference in Baghdad endorsed a pledge to "fight terrorism and enhance security" with the United States joining its enemies Iran and Syria at the same conference table.
The conference marked the first time in months Iran and the United States had direct talks and was seen as a chance for Washington to open a dialogue with two states it has previously sought to isolate.
The US decision to attend the conference was widely seen as a shift in policy, as the White House had for months rejected the idea.
The US ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, said he was cautiously optimistic about the direct talks he and his delegation had held with the Iranians and Syrians.
"The overall mood was businesslike, constructive exchanges, nobody was pounding the table, the exchanges were quite, I would say, ordinary and there was a frank and sometimes even jovial exchanges," he told reporters in a conference call.
In an interview with US television network NBC, Khalilzad said he spoke with his Iran counterpart for a few minutes Saturday at the opening of the conference.
While there were no "substantive" direct talks between the two sides, Khalilzad said he raised US allegations that Iran was supplying arms and other support to Iraqi insurgents. Iran denied the allegations, he said.
Bush recently warned Iran that US soldiers would take necessary action to protect themselves and has dispatched two aircraft carriers to the Gulf, prompting fears of a possible a military confrontation with Tehran.
The US president said the conference on Iraq security had produced commitments to assist Iraq, which he called "very positive," and that the Iraqi leadership would now be better able to resolve sectarian divisions.
"This young democracy had nations from around the neighborhood and around the world coming talk to them in a way that was constructive and positive," Bush said.
"I believe the conference will give the different factions inside Iraq the confidence necessary to do the hard things to reconcile and the government the confidence necessary to make the decisions so that reconciliation can happen. So it's a positive outcome."
Bush said "the momentum" gained from the conference could help pave the way for a planned follow-up meeting at the ministerial level.