U.S. lowers expectations for conference on Iraq

A gathering of top diplomats intended to reconcile warring sects in Iraq instead threatens to further expose the rift between Sunni and Shiite Muslims in the wider region. As a result, observers and participants now have limited expectations for the two-day conference that opens today.

Suggesting the depth of this rift, American officials backed away Wednesday from earlier optimism and offered decidedly somber assessments of what they believe can be achieved during the much-touted meetings.

“Let’s not have overreaching expectations,” Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told reporters traveling with her to this Red Sea resort. “It’s going to take time to overcome suspicions within Iraq, and those suspicions within Iraq then feed suspicions in the region.

“All the more reason to get Iraq’s neighbors together to talk,” she said.

But even that is difficult.

Last week, the Sunni ruler of Saudi Arabia, King Abdullah, refused to meet with the Shiite prime minister of Iraq, Nouri Maliki, who was touring the region in an effort to drum up support for the conference. At the time, aides said the king had no time in his schedule for the Iraqi leader. Abdullah and other Sunni leaders have complained that Iraq’s Shiite-led government is not protecting the country’s Sunni minority.

After being snubbed, Maliki responded that countries in the region are harboring Sunni insurgents who come to Iraq to fight.

The country’s raging civil war has claimed tens of thousands of victims on both sides of the sectarian divide.

Egypt has proposed a three-month cease-fire between Iraq’s Shiite-dominated security forces and Sunni insurgents, according to a draft resolution circulated last week. But Iraqi officials rejected the idea Monday, according to the Associated Press.

“Definitely there’s a sectarian rift in the Middle East, [but] it is not politically correct to bring it on the table,” said Gamal Abdel Gawad, an Egyptian political analyst. At the conference, that rift will be the subtext of all negotiations as delegates talk about “national reconciliation” instead of “sectarian division,” he said.

Neighboring Sunni countries want Iraq to meet a number of goals -- among them, rewriting its constitution and bringing more Sunnis into the government and armed forces.

Maliki’s government has balked at such conditions for aid and has suggested that the Sunni neighbors fear Shiite ascent to power in an oil-rich and strategically important country.

“There’s a political process in Iraq; 12 million Iraqis voted,” said Ali Dabbagh, the main spokesman for the Iraqi government. “That should be respected by the Saudis and everyone else.”

Kuwait, another Sunni-dominated country, has refused to forgive Iraq’s $15 billion debt.

Dabbagh described it as “unfair” that Iraqis pay a debt incurred mostly as war reparations after the 1991 invasion of Kuwait -- a campaign led by Saddam Hussein, a Sunni.

American officials seemed somewhat frustrated Wednesday night, suggesting that a lack of knowledge about the situation in Iraq has led to entrenched positions. A senior State Department official pointed out that few Sunni nations have diplomats in the country.

“They’re seeing Iraq through the prism of the last 1,400 years of history,” said the official, who requested anonymity due to the sensitive discussions. “Frankly, there hasn’t been very good communication either way.”

Ministerial delegates from 30 countries are scheduled to conduct two days of talks at the heavily guarded convention center outside Sharm el Sheik. Iraqi officials are expected to present an economic reform plan and, in turn, get pledges of international support, including billions of dollars of aid and debt relief.

Officials are less certain of any concrete political results.

“I wouldn’t expect the neighbors’ meeting to produce a specific result where we can say: ‘Wow that really succeeded,’ ” U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker told reporters Tuesday during a conference call from Baghdad.

One of the biggest questions of the conference is whether U.S. officials will meet Iranian or Syrian delegates. Such a meeting could signal a change in course for the Bush administration, which has continued to try to isolate both regimes.

Iraqi officials have been pushing hard to get Iran to attend the conference. Tehran agreed to send a delegation that includes Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki, but few observers expect that any contact between the U.S. and Iran will amount to more than a perfunctory meet-and-greet.

“We have to keep our expectations low,” Gawad said. “I don’t think the conference will be an opportunity for comprehensive negotiations.”

Before the conference, both the Iranians and the Americans were hedging their bets, signaling interest but without commitment. Syrian officials said they would be interested in talks with the Americans.

The U.S. has been under pressure from Arab and European allies to talk directly with Iran and Syria on a variety of issues, including Tehran’s nuclear ambitions and the flow of foreign militants and supplies to the insurgency in Iraq. Observers believe a chief U.S. objective during the conference will be to signal a new willingness to talk.

The U.S. officials’ principal goal “is to show that they’re not the obstacle,” said Patrick Clawson of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

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roug@latimes.com

paul.richter@latimes.com

Special correspondent Noha el Hennawy contributed to this report.