BAGHDAD, Feb. 27 — Plans for talks between Iraq and its neighbors to find ways to curb the nation’s sectarian violence may now also include the United States and Britain.
In December, a bipartisan United States Iraq Study group issued a report recommending that the United States hold direct talks with Syria and Iran to help stem the violence in Iraq, but the Bush administration was cool to the idea.
The United States has accused Iran of fomenting violence in Iraq and of supplying weapons that have been used in Iraq to kill American troops. American officials have also accused Syria of letting foreign fighters cross its border with Iraq.
The development came on another day of carnage around Iraq. At least 18 boys aged 10 to 15 were killed in Ramadi, a city west of Baghdad, when a car bomb exploded near a park popular with young soccer players, police said. Ramadi is a hotbed of the Sunni insurgency.
Hoshiar Zebari, Iraq’s foreign minister, said the regional meeting on Iraq will include Iraq; its six neighbors; the United States, Britain and the three other members of the United Nations Security Council; the members of the Arab League, and The Organization of Islamic Conference.
Because of security concerns, he said, the delegates would be officials at the rank of deputy minister and below rather than the foreign ministers themselves. But he said he expected the meeting to lead to others.
The American embassy in Baghdad confirmed the participation of American officials in the talks.
Also today, American and Iraqi forces conducted what was apparently their biggest raid in the Shiite controlled Sadr City neighborhood of Baghdad since the start of the recent security push.
The American military said 16 people were detained in the raid, which focused on detaining leaders of rogue cells of the Mahdi Army. Those sought are accused of involvement in sectarian violence and attacks on coalition forces.
Some of those detained included members of the Iraqi police force working for Iraqi security forces, according to police officials and the office of Moktada al-Sadr, the cleric who controls the Mahdi Army.
The Bush administration has been pushing the Iraqi government to rid its security forces of sectarian influence.
At least 13 others were killed and 36 wounded in seven other attacks around the country. Among them was a car bomb that exploded in Baghdad near the headquarters of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, a powerful group in the Shiite alliance.
Five were killed and 10 wounded.