Iran To Join Iraq Talks In Highest Contact With U.S. In 2 Years

BAGHDAD, Feb. 28 — The top Iranian national security official, Ali Larijani, indicated Wednesday that Iranian officials would take part in a regional security conference on Iraq, setting the stage for the highest-level contact between American and Iranian officials in more than two years.

A day after the Bush administration said it had agreed to such talks, Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki of Iraq announced Wednesday that the first stage of the conference would be held March 10 in Baghdad, the capital. The agenda will be how to rescue Iraq from a civil war that claimed about two dozen more lives on Wednesday, and that is likely to require the American military to maintain a greatly enlarged force in Baghdad until at least fall, a top United States commander said.

In the deadliest attack on Wednesday, a car bomb exploded in a marketplace in the Bayaa district of Baghdad, killing 10 people and wounding 27 others, officials from the Interior Ministry and Yarmouk Hospital said. In central Baghdad, two Iraqi policemen died when a suicide bomber struck the entrance to the Bab al-Sheik police station.

Also on Wednesday the American military command said a soldier was killed by small-arms fire in an unspecified western district of Baghdad on Tuesday while on patrol with the Iraqi national police.

North of the capital in Diyala Province, where Sunni Arab insurgents and foreign fighters have been waging a deadly struggle for control against Shiite militias and death squads, two brothers of a prominent Sunni Arab member of the Iraqi national Parliament, Dr. Salim Abdullah, were shot to death on Wednesday, security officials there said.

Also on Wednesday, mortar attacks killed at least six people and wounded 14 in Shurta, a neighborhood in western Baghdad, an Interior Ministry official said. Other mortar barrages have killed at least four people in the past two days near Iskandariya, a town south of Baghdad, the local police said.

In Salahuddin Province north of Baghdad, two Iraqi policemen were killed in a drive-by shooting near Baiji. Farther north, in Mosul, a police colonel and his driver were shot dead in their car.

Two weeks have passed since American forces began large-scale operations as part of the Baghdad security plan. Iraqi officials have called the plan a success, but American commanders are much more measured. Some American officers have said they believe many death squad and militia leaders fled the capital to avoid stepped up American patrols and will return once the Baghdad security plan is completed.

The plan, which calls for 17,000 additional troops in Baghdad, will continue until at least this fall, the second-ranking commander in Iraq, Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, told CNN on Wednesday.

I dont want to put an exact time on it, but a minimum of six to nine months, General Odierno said. He also said that Sunni militants were responsible for about 70 percent of the attacks on American troops.

The willingness of American officials to attend the March 10 security conference with Syrian and Iranian officials has been widely seen as reflecting a decision by the Bush administration to yield to critics who have argued that it should no longer avoid high-level contacts with Tehran.

Mr. Larijani, in a statement translated into English on the official Iranian news agency Web site, said that the Iranian foreign minister, Manouchehr Mottaki, had received a formal invitation from his Iraqi counterpart, Hoshyar Zebari.

We will participate in the conference of Iraqi neighboring states in Baghdad in March, if it will be of help to Baghdad, Mr. Larijani said. We will carry out everything necessary to advance Iraqi interests. Iraqi leaders have a great potential for administering the countrys affairs.

Iraqi officials have also said that Syria has agreed to attend.

Ahmad Fadam and Khalid al-Ansary contributed reporting from Baghdad, and Iraqi employees of The New York Times from Diyala and Hilla.

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