- BAGHDAD (AFP) -- Iran warned it will retaliate in the event of a US strike,
during the highest level visit of an Iranian official to neighboring Iraq
since President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won power in Tehran last summer.
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- Meanwhile, 18 people were killed in attacks
across the country as British Prime Minister Tony Blair, wrapping up a
visit to Washington, appealed for countries to put their differences behind
on Iraq and rally behind the new government.
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- "In the event that America launches
a strike from any place, Iran will retaliate by targeting that place,"
Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki told journalists in Baghdad after expressing
his support for Iraq's new government.
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- He confirmed his country's decision not
to hold direct talks with the United States over the situation in Iraq,
while saying he thought "the risks of a confrontation are minimal."
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- "I don't think the United States
is in a position to create a new crisis for US taxpayers," Mottaki
said.
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- US President George W. Bush has refused
to rule out a military strike against Iran if negotiations fail to calm
suspicions it is trying to develop a nuclear weapon.
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- Washington believes Iran is using its
civil nuclear energy program as a cover to produce nuclear weapons and
has demanded Iran halt uranium enrichment activity.
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- "The solution to the Iran nuclear
issue will come through cooperation or confrontation," Mottaki said,
denouncing what he described as a double standard in international nuclear
policy.
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- "For our part, we prefer diplomatic
means. (But) we are ready for any eventualities and we have told that to
the Americans."
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- Mottaki's visit comes amid swirling British
and US accusations that Iran is fomenting and supporting recent violence
in the southern Shiite city of Basra.
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- Mottaki, who pledged Iran would "support
Iraq's reconstruction until the Iraqi people are able to handle their own
fate," declined to answer the allegations when asked by a journalist
to respond to them.
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- Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari
said the issue had been raised during a "very open discussion"
with Mottaki at a press conference.
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- "We did raise all the concerns,"
Zebari said adding that security protocols between the two countries were
in place.
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- The last such high-level visitor from
Tehran was former Iranian foreign minister Kamal Kharrazi who visited Baghdad
in May 2005.
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- Relations between Iran and Iraq, which
fought a bloody war from 1980-1988, have improved dramatically since the
fall of Saddam Hussein and the coming to power of Iraq's long disenfranchised
Shiite majority -- many of whose leaders once sought refuge in Iran.
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- "Iraq will never again be a threat
to Iran," Zebari said, while asking that his neighbors not take advantage
of Baghdad's current difficulties by interfering in its affairs.
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- Without naming names, Prime Minister
Nuri al-Maliki accused institutions and charitable organizations in neighboring
countries of funding armed groups in Iraq in an interview with Dubai-based
TV news channel Al-Arabiya on Thursday.
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- Maliki said it was the neighbors' obligation
to control the activities of these organizations if they want normal relations
with Iraq.
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- In Washington, Blair urged the international
community to put behind its differences over the 2003 US-led invasion.
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- "This should be a moment of reconciliation
not only in Iraq but in the international community," Blair said in
a speech on foreign policy at Georgetown University in Washington.
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- "The war split the world,"
he said. "The struggle of Iraqis for democracy should unite it."
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- Blair said though success in Iraq would
reverberate across the Middle East, a more concerted and concentrated effort
was needed throughout the region, especially in tackling Iran's controversial
nuclear program.
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- "I don't believe we will be secure
unless Iran changes," he said.
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- Meanwhile, violence raged on in Iraq
as 18 people were killed in a series of attacks, including eight in a car
bombing near one of Baghdad's main bus stations, an official at the defense
ministry said.
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- In a particularly grisly discovery in
Muqdadiyah, north of the restive city of Baquba, authorities found five
decapitated bodies of Shiites who had been kidnapped over the past few
days, a security source said.
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- Five corpses were also found in Baquba
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