I/II. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jun/16/us-iran-talks-iraq-john-kerry
US and Iran hold talks over Iraq crisis but rule out military alliance Obama says he is sending up to 275 troops to Iraq as discussions take place with Iran on best way to halt Islamist insurgents - Paul Lewis <http://www.theguardian.com/profile/paullewis> in Washington, Spencer Ackerman <http://www.theguardian.com/profile/spencerackerman> in New York and Saeed Kamali Dehghan <http://www.theguardian.com/profile/saeedkamalidehghan> in London - - theguardian.com <http://www.theguardian.com/>, Tuesday 17 June 2014 00.00 BST John Kerry said: 'I wouldn't rule out anything that would be constructive to providing real stability.' His remarks were later clarified by officials. Photo: Susan Walsh/AP US and Iranian officials held talks over the advance of Islamist insurgents in Iraq on Monday, the first time the two nations have collaborated over a common security interest in more than a decade. The discussions in Vienna took place on the sidelines of separate negotiations about Iran's nuclear programme, as Barack Obama told Congress that the he was deploying up to 275 military personnel to Iraq. The developments came amid conflicting signals in Washington over the extent of any coordination with Tehran over the crisis in Iraq. John Kerry, the US secretary of state, pointedly declined to rule out military cooperation in an interview on Monday, but US and Iranian officials later stressed that there was no prospect of military coordination, and none was discussed in Vienna, where talks were described as short and inconclusive. "We are open to engaging the Iranians," said a senior State Department official, who characterised the discussions as brief. "These engagements will not include military coordination or strategic determinations about Iraq's future over the heads of the Iraqi people," the US official said, on condition of anonymity. The Iranians confirmed that military cooperation was not on the cards. "The disastrous situation in Iraq was discussed today. No specific outcome was achieved," a senior Iranian official told Reuters. Fighters from the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (Isis) have rapidly advanced through mostly Sunni areas of Iraq in recent days, capturing several cities. It was reported on Monday that they had taken Tal Afar, a northern Iraqi city. On Sunday, the insurgent fighters posted images purporting to show the execution of hundreds of Shia fighters. Obama said in his notification to Congress that the military personnel being sent to Iraq would provide support and security for the American embassy in Baghdad, but was "equipped for combat". "This force will remain in Iraq until the security situation becomes such that it is no longer needed," he said. Around 170 of those forces have already arrived and another 100 soldiers will be on standby in a nearby country such as Kuwait until they are needed. In addition, officials told Reuters that the White House was considering sending a contingent of special forces to train and advise beleaguered Iraqi troops, many of whom have fled their posts in the face of the insurgency. Earlier, in an indication of how sensitive in Washington any cooperation with Tehran would be, officials moved quickly to clarify remarks by Kerry, who went further than his administration colleagues in entertaining military cooperation with Iran against a common adversary. "We're open to discussions if there is something constructive that can be contributed by Iran, if Iran is prepared to do something that is going to respect the integrity and sovereignty of Iraq and ability of the government to reform," Kerry told Yahoo News. <http://news.yahoo.com/katie-couric--john-kerry-interview-213218299.html> Pressed by interviewer Katie Couric over whether that would include military cooperation, Kerry replied: "At this moment I think we need to go step by step and see what in fact might be a reality. But I wouldn't rule out anything that would be constructive to providing real stability." Less than three hours later, the Pentagon released a series of public statements that firmly ruled out military coordination. "There has been no contact, nor are there plans for contact, between [the Department of Defense] and the Iranian military on the security situation in Iraq," lieutenant commander Bill Speaks, a Pentagon spokesman, told the Guardian. Notwithstanding the denials of military collaboration, the advent of joint diplomatic efforts between Washington and Tehran over the chaos in Iraq represents a dramatic turnaround for the two rival powers, whose relations, frozen for several decades, have only begun to thaw over the past year. Military experts say any US air strikes in Iraq would will be impeded by the lack of intelligence from the the ground. An Iranian offensive, by contrast, would be expected to involve elite forces of ground troops that would engage in direct combat with Isis fighters, gaining a detailed knowledge of the battle lines. Yet the notion of a partnership between the longtime foes prompted intense resistance in some quarters of Washington and Tehran on Monday. "It would be the height of folly to believe that the Iranian regime can be our partner in managing the deteriorating security situation in Iraq," senator John McCain said in a statement. McCain's remarks contrasted with those of another Republican hawk, Lindsey Graham, who on Sunday expressed support for cooperating with Iran. McCain and Graham are usually in lockstep over foreign policy issues and their dispute revealed the divisions uncovered by the prospect of a collaboration with Iran. Washington has dispatched some of its most senior White House and State Department officials to the nuclear talks in Austria, including the top deputy secretary of state, William Burns. He was scheduled to meet Iran's foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton on Monday. Their meeting kicks off five days of negotiations between Iran and the six world powers collectively referred to as "P5+1". Before arriving in Vienna, Zarif spoke by telephone with the British foreign secretary, William Hague, about the possible role Iran could play in easing the conflict in Iraq. Iran and the US previously collaborated over military intelligence in the post 9/11 fight against the Taliban in Afghanistan 13 years ago. But a US offical cautioned against reading too much into the latest talks. "No one should expect that all of a sudden, overnight, even if we resolve the nuclear agreement, that everything will change. It will not," the official said. "The fundamentals remain exactly as they are. Until we resolve the nuclear issue there cannot be any kind of fundamental change in this relationship." In Iraq on Monday, the capital, Baghdad, remained outside the grasp of Isis. But the mayor of Tal Afar, a city of 200,000 people located 260 miles north-west of Baghdad, told the Associated Press that the insurgent group was in control there. A resident said militants in pickup trucks with machine guns and jihadi banners were roaming the streets as gunfire rang out. Fighting in Tal Afar began on Sunday, with Iraqi government officials saying Isis fighters were firing rockets seized from military arms depots in the Mosul area. They said the local garrison suffered heavy casualties and the main hospital was unable to cope with the wounded. There were fears that militants would carry out further atrocities in Tal Afar, which is ethnically mixed and made up of Shias and Sunni Turkomen. Claims at the weekend that the insurgents had killed 1,700 Iraqi soldiers could not be verified. But pictures, on a militant website, appear to show masked Isis fighters loading captives on to flatbed trucks before forcing them to lie facedown in a shallow ditch with their arms tied behind their backs. The final images show the bodies of the captives soaked in blood after being shot at several locations. Iraq's chief military spokesman, Lt Gen Qassim al-Moussawi, said the photos were genuine and that he was aware of cases of mass murder of captured Iraqi soldiers in areas held by Isis. Tal Afar's capture came hours after Nouri al-Maliki, the Iraqi prime minister, vowed to retake every inch of territory seized by the militants. "We will march and liberate every inch they defaced, from the country's northernmost point to the southernmost point," Maliki told volunteers joining up to fight the insurgents. *Additional reporting by Mark Tran* II. http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/06/16/state-department-warned-iran-was-aiding-iraq-militias-now-weighs-possible/ State Department warned Iran was aiding Iraq militias, now weighs possible alliance Published June 16, 2014 FoxNews.com <http://www.foxnews.com/> The Iranian government, which the White House is now looking to as a possible partner to help counter the insurgency threatening to split Iraq, was cited just months ago by the Obama administration's own State Department as a prime instigator in that country. Counterterrorism officials warned about Iran's meddling in Iraq as part of its report on state sponsors of terrorism. "Despite its pledge to support Iraq's stabilization, Iran trained, funded, and provided guidance to Iraqi Shia militant groups," the report said <http://www.state.gov/j/ct/rls/crt/2013/224826.htm>. The warning underscores the challenging -- and outright confusing -- situation the Obama administration finds itself in as it considers whether to align with Iran in order to save Iraq from Sunni militants. Further complicating the situation, senior U.S. Defense officials confirmed to Fox News that Syrian war planes struck two separate convoys belonging to the insurgent Islamic State of Iraq and Syria on Saturday. According to sources familiar with the incident, the Syrian planes struck with the help of Iranian intelligence. There is no bomb damage assessment from the attack, but it is the first time there have been reports of Syrian warplanes having crossed into Iraq since ISIS fighters swept across Iraq beginning a week ago. The strike raises the prospect of the United States, Iran and Syria all battling the same enemy in Iraq. All three have an apparent interest in preventing the fragile Iraqi government from falling to radical Sunni militants who have toppled several northern Iraqi cities and towns and threaten to advance farther south. "We're open to discussions if there is something constructive that can be contributed by Iran, if Iran is prepared to do something that is going to respect the integrity and sovereignty of Iraq and ability of the government to reform," Secretary of State John Kerry told Yahoo! News. A senior State Department official told Fox News on Monday that the United States and Iran briefly discussed Iraq on the sidelines of nuclear talks in Vienna. The engagements did not include military coordination or strategic determinations about Iraq's future, but about how ISIS threatens other countries in the region, including Iran, and the need to refrain from supporting a sectarian agenda in the nation, the official said. The Obama administration has openly advocated for the ouster of Syria's Bashar Assad. And the recent State Department report on Iran raises serious questions about whether the U.S. and Iran would really be working toward the same goals in Iraq. The Washington Free Beacon first reported on the April warning <http://freebeacon.com/national-security/state-dept-ignored-warnings-of-iranian-efforts-to-destabilize-iraq/>, as it relates to the current deliberations. As reported by the Free Beacon, the report warned that Iran was working against U.S. goals in Iraq, by boosting Shiite militia groups -- sectarian tensions are part of what allowed the Sunni Islamic State of Iraq and Syria to gain ground in the country's north. The State Department report specifically said Iranian forces were working with Hezbollah to provide advisers in Iraq for Shiite militants "in the construction and use of sophisticated improvised explosive device technology and other advanced weaponry." Further, the report said Iran has "remained unwilling to bring to justice senior al Qaeda (AQ) members it continued to detain, and refused to publicly identify those senior members in its custody." The White House, State Department and Pentagon all insisted Monday that they are not considering any military cooperation with Tehran. "We have no intention to coordinate military activities with Iran. No plans to have consultations with Iran about military activities in Iraq," Pentagon Press Secretary Rear Adm. John Kirby told reporters. "There is no joint military operation with Iran." The possibility of partnering with Iran to deal with a common foe has divided some of the Obama administration's toughest critics. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., called the idea of an alliance of convenience with Iran the "height of folly." Citing the Syrian war, McCain strongly urged the Obama administration not to partner with Iran this time. "This is the same Iranian regime that has trained and armed the most dangerous Shia militant groups, that has consistently urged Prime Minister Maliki to pursue a narrow sectarian agenda at the expense of national reconciliation, that supplies the rockets that have been fired at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, that has sponsored acts of terrorism throughout the Middle East and the world, and that continues to use Iraq's territory and airspace to send weapons and fighters to prop up Bashar al-Assad in Syria," McCain said in a statement, reminding the president that U.S. and Iranian interests "do not align" and their involvement could make the situation in Iraq worse by inflaming sectarian tensions and driving more Sunni's into the ranks of ISIS. Yet Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., who typically is in lockstep with McCain on national security matters, on Sunday likened it to the U.S. aligning with Stalin during World War II, because he "was not as bad as Hitler." "The Iranians can provide some assets to make sure Baghdad doesn't fall," Graham said on CNN's "State of the Union." Meanwhile, the U.S. is positioning Naval vessels in the Persian Gulf to assist in the event of an evacuation. Americans already are being moved out of the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad -- according to a senior U.S. official, about 1,000 U.S. Embassy personnel are slated to be moved to other U.S. consulates in Iraq, as well as to Jordan. That represents one-fifth of the 5,000 personnel at the compound, the largest American embassy in the world. The embassy remains open. The White House Monday afternoon said approximately 275 military personnel are being sent to Iraq "to provide support and security for U.S. personnel and the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad," according to a statement. Obama says the forces are going to provide support and security for U.S. personnel and the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad. He says the forces, which are entering Iraq with the consent of the nation's government, are equipped for combat and will remain until the security situation becomes such that they are no longer needed. *Fox News' Jennifer Griffin and The Associated Press contributed to this report.* -- Peace Is Doable -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Green Youth Movement" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send an email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/greenyouth. 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