Iran, Iraq and Syria to hold talks

The Associated Press 

Iran has invited the presidents of Iraq and Syria to Tehran for a weekend summit meeting with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to hash out ways to cooperate in curbing the runaway violence that has taken Iraq to the verge of civil war and threatens to spread through the region, key Iraqi lawmakers said Monday.

President Jalal Talabani of Iraq has accepted the invitation and will fly to the Iranian capital Saturday, a close parliamentary associate said.

The Iranian diplomatic gambit appeared designed to upstage expected moves from Washington to include Syria and Iran in a wider regional effort to clamp off violence in Iraq, where more than 1,300 people have been killed in the first 20 days of November.

The violence continued Monday, when assassins killed a popular TV comedian and a college professor but failed in attempts to kill two Iraqi government officials. In all, 21 Iraqis were killed in a series of attacks around the country.

The Iranian move was seen as a display of its increasingly muscular role in the Middle East, where it has already established deep influence over Syria and Lebanon.

"All three countries intend to hold a three-way summit among Iraq, Iran and Syria to discuss the security situation and the repercussions for stability of the region," said Ali al-Adeeb, a lawmaker of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki's Dawa Party and a close aide to the prime minister.

Syria is widely believed to have done little to stop foreign fighters and recruits to Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia from crossing its border to join Sunni insurgents in Iraq. It has also provided refuge for many top members of Saddam Hussein's former leadership and political corps, which is thought to have organized arms and funding for the insurgents. The Sunni insurgency, since it sprang to life in late summer 2003, has been responsible for most of the American deaths in Iraq.

An Iraqi government spokesman said late Monday that diplomatic relations between Iraq and Syria would be restored.

Iran is deeply involved in training, financing and arming the two major Shiite militias in Iraq, where Tehran has deep historic ties to the current Shiite political leadership. Many Iraqi Shiites spent years in Iranian exile during Saddam's decades in power in Baghdad. One militia, the Badr Brigade, was trained in Iran by the Revolutionary Guard.

An Ahmadinejad spokesman said Talibani's visit was scheduled several weeks ago for late November to work on improving bilateral relations.

But Talabani confidants said the invitation was issued on Thursday by the Iranian ambassador, Hassan Kazimi Qumi, who said President Bashar al-Assad of Syria would also be in Tehran for the talks with Ahmadinejad.

On Monday, the Syrian foreign minister, Walid al-Moualem, met with Iraqi officials, including Maliki, on the second day of a landmark visit to Baghdad. Iraq and Syria severed ties when Syria sided with Iran during the 1980- 1988 Iran-Iraq war.

Moualem pledged Syria's cooperation in tackling violence that has raised the specter of civil war, saying it was prepared to work "hand in hand to achieve the security of brother Iraq."

It was the first time a Syrian minister had visited Iraq since the 2003 invasion and is a rare visit by any senior Arab official.

The civilian victims of the widespread attacks Monday in Iraq included Walid Hassan, a famous comedian on Al Sharqiya TV, who was shot and killed while driving in western Baghdad. He had performed in a comedy series called "Caricature," which mocked coalition forces and the Iraqi governments since the U.S.-led invasion.

Assailants also shot and killed Fulayeh al-Ghurabi, a Shiite professor at Babil University in the province south of Baghdad, as he was driving home from the school at midday, the police said.

In addition to the 21 killed Monday, the bodies of 26 Iraqis who had been kidnapped and tortured were found on the streets of the capital; in Dujail, north of Baghdad; and in the Tigris River in southern Iraq, the police said.

Minister of State Mohammed Abbas Auraibi, a member of Iraq's Shiite majority, said a roadside bomb hit his convoy at about 9:30 a.m. Monday in eastern Baghdad, wounding two of his bodyguards.

Hakim al-Zamily, a Shiite deputy health minister, also escaped unhurt when gunmen fired at his convoy in central Baghdad at noon on Monday, killing two of his guards, the minister said.

A U.S. soldier was killed by a roadside bomb in Baghdad on Saturday night and a U.S. marine died during combat in Anbar Province on Sunday, the military said, raising to at least 2,865 the number of U.S. service members who have died since the beginning of the war. This month in Iraq, 47 American service members have been killed or have died.

Coalition forces again raided Baghdad's Sadr City, the stronghold of a Shiite militia suspected of having carried out a mass kidnapping at the Ministry of Higher Education last week.

Iraqi forces searched and damaged a mosque during the operation, but made no arrests, the U.S. military said. The Iraqi forces, acting with the assistance of U.S. military advisers, also destroyed a vehicle near the mosque that was posing a threat to the ground forces, the coalition said.

Meanwhile, British and Iraqi forces raided homes in southern Iraq on Monday and arrested four suspects in the kidnapping of four American security guards and their Austrian co-worker, an official said.

The raid, which began late Sunday and ended early Monday morning, took place in Zubair, a mostly Sunni-Arab enclave about 32 kilometers, or 20 miles, south of Basra.$@

Iraqi deployment urged

The United States should push for available and trained Iraqi security forces to be sent to the front lines of the fight to stabilize the war-torn country, the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee said Monday, according to The Associated Press in Washington.

"We need to saddle those up and deploy them to the fight" in dangerous areas, said the Republican chairman, Representative Duncan Hunter of California. He took a different tack from Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, who has urged that additional U.S. troops be sent there.

The statements Monday continued a debate on Iraq war policy that had been intensifying even before midterm elections that saw the Democrats take back control of the House and Senate.