US-Iran to hold fourth round of Iraq talks

Britain quits Basra in two weeks, Brown says in Iraq

BAGHDAD (Agencies)

Britain said it will hand over the Basra province to Iraqi control within two weeks, while a U.S.-Iranian committee set up to find ways to quell violence in Iraq will meet next week, Iraq's foreign minister said on Monday.

Ambassadors from Washington and Tehran have met in Baghdad three times since May after a diplomatic freeze that lasted almost 30 years, but have agreed on little of substance except the creation of the committee after their second meeting.

Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshiyar Zebari told a news conference the talks would be held in Baghdad on Dec. 18.

Washington accuses Iran of arming, funding and training Shiite militias in Iraq. Tehran rejects this and blames violence, in which tens of thousands of Iraqis have been killed, on the U.S.-led invasion to topple Saddam Hussein in 2003.

"This will be a technical meeting, a follow-up to the last meeting of security experts, not at the level of the ambassadors but (deputy chiefs of missions) and security experts," Zebari said. More ambassadorial talks could be held later, he said.

The U.S. embassy in Baghdad confirmed the date of the next meeting with Iranian officials and said senior diplomat Marcie Ries would head its delegation. Tehran had no immediate comment.

Following the pattern of previous talks, the meeting will focus solely on Iraq's security, with Iran's disputed nuclear ambitions again not on the agenda.

The first three meetings coincided with the U.S. military launching a security crackdown, backed by 30,000 extra troops, which it said was designed to pull Iraq back from the brink of sectarian civil war between majority Shiites and minority Sunni Arabs.

Attacks across Iraq have fallen 60 percent since the extra troops were fully deployed in mid-June, the military says.

While the U.S. military remains wary, U.S. officials have softened their rhetoric towards Iran in recent weeks, noting several positive developments in Iranian influence in Iraq.

In the latest violence, a mortar attack killed seven inmates at an Interior Ministry jail and Iraqi security officials said a rocket strike started a large fire at a Baghdad oil refinery.

Britain pulls out

Britain will hand over the Basra province to Iraqi control within two weeks, Prime Minister Gordon Brown said during a surprise trip to southern Iraq Sunday.

Addressing troops in the southern Iraqi city, Brown said that Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki was recommending "a move to provincial Iraqi control within two weeks", a spokesman in London said.

"I have just talked to Prime Minister Maliki, and he has asked me to pass on his thanks to you for what you have done to help rebuild the democracy of Iraq," Brown said, according to the spokesman.

"It's because of all the operations we have done over the past few months that the security situation has not only improved, but he is now recommending a move to provincial Iraqi control within two weeks."

Britain has about 5,500 troops in southern Iraq, and Brown said in October that troop numbers would be cut by more than half to 2,500 by early next year as Iraqis assume control of Basra province.

No date has yet been fixed, but according to a British military spokesman the transfer had long been set for mid-December.

About 500 British troops handed over their base at the Saddam-era Basra Palace in September after Iraqi security forces took control of the city, and they are now all stationed on a base just outside Basra city.

A parliamentary committee said Monday that Britain had failed in its original aim of bringing security to southern Iraq, and expressed concern about continued violence there and across the country.

"The initial goal of UK forces in southeastern Iraq was to establish the security necessary for the development of representative political institutions and for economic reconstruction," the House of Commons defense committee said. "Although progress has been made, this goal remains unfulfilled."

Last month, however, a British general said that violence had plummeted in Basra and Iraq's security forces were in full control, while cautioning that the handover was not without risk as violence had not dropped off entirely.
In total, 173 British troops have been killed in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion of the country to oust Saddam Hussein in March 2003, according to defense ministry figures.

Brown's visit to Iraq comes after he called for the immediate release of five British men kidnapped there, and rejected a demand by their captors that London withdraw all its troops from the country.

He was speaking after the Dubai-based AlArabiya news channel broadcast a video on Tuesday in which an armed group, who kidnapped a British management consultant and his four bodyguards, demanded that Britain leave Iraq within 10 days.

It did not say what the consequences would be if it did not.