The Bush administration has made a formal request to Iran to help ease growing violence in Iraq and Tehran is now making an attempt to mediate in the conflict, Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharazi said Wednesday.
"There has been a lot of correspondence. Regarding Iraq, there has also been a lot of exchanges of correspondence," Kharazi told reporters when asked about the current state of relations with the United States.
"Naturally, there was a request for our help in improving the situation in Iraq and solving the crisis, and we are making efforts in this regard," the minister said after a cabinet meeting.
He added that exchanges of written communications between the two sides continued to be made via the Swiss embassy in the Iranian capital, asserting that there was no direct contact between Washington and Tehran.
"We have had negotiations in the past but they were stopped. We are of the sentiment that these negotiations are pointless, because the Americans make promises but do not keep them," Kharazi noted, according to AFP.
He also asserted that a regular forum of Iraq's neighbours -- Iran, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria and Turkey plus Egypt -- remained the best mechanism for advising the US on its presence in Iraq, which Kharazi said was heading in the "wrong direction."
Kharazi's statements came after the official news agency IRNA said Iran's Foreign Ministry Director General for
Persian Gulf Affairs, Hossein Saddeqi left Tehran for Baghdad Wednesday to explore avenues for settling the ongoing crisis in the country with senior Iraqi officials.
According to the Iranian Foreign Ministry, Saddeqi and his accompanying delegation were to hold talks with senior Iraqi religious authorities, officials of the Governing Council and political leaders.
In a related development, an envoy appointed by Shiite leader, Sayyed Moqtada al-Sadr said on Wednesday he was asked to convey a set of peace proposals to US officials, Reuters reported Wednesday.
"Sayyed Moqtada made positive proposals to end the crisis. I cannot disclose the details. He realises that an armed confrontation is not in anybody's interest," Abdelkarim al-Anzi told Reuters in Baghdad.
Anzi, who held talks with Sadr in the holy city of Najaf on Tuesday, said he was due to meet Iraqi Governing Council members later on Wednesday to discuss the proposals before seeing US officials.
On the ground, American warplanes and helicopter gunships attacked Iraqi fighters as a cease-fire in Fallujah was strained by increasingly intense firefights.
A U.S. Cobra attack helicopter fired rockets and heavy machine-guns before dawn Wednesday at Iraqis gathered on the northern edge of Fallujah, The AP reported.
Early Wednesday, A-130 gunships bombed buildings from which Marines claimed ambushes have repeatedly been carried out in a residential area of the city. (Albawaba.com)
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