Iraq meeting may be overshadowed by US-Iran talks

By Mariam Karouny

SHARM EL-SHEIKH, Egypt (Reuters) - An international conference will seek solutions to the Iraq conflict on Thursday but possible talks between U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Iran's foreign minister could grab the limelight.

Talks between Rice and Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki would be one of the highest-level encounters between Washington and Tehran since the 1979 revolution turned Iran from a close U.S. ally into the arch-foe Islamic Republic.

Washington has accused Iran of fomenting violence in Iraq and U.S. officials have said if Rice met Mottaki she would call for an end to the flow of arms and foreign fighters into Iraq as well as training of insurgents. Tehran rejects the charges.

U.S. President George W. Bush's administration has dropped once resolute opposition to high-level contacts with countries like Iran and Syria as it seeks ways to end the Iraqi conflict.

A formal meeting has not been set up between Rice and Mottaki while they are in the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, but she has made clear she would not avoid it.

"If we encounter each other and wander to other subjects I am prepared to address them at least in terms of American policy," Rice told reporters on Wednesday.

Rice has said she would not cut off a conversation if it turned to Tehran's nuclear programme. The United States accuses Iran of having a secret programme to build nuclear weapons, a charge Tehran denies.

U.S. and Iranian envoys spoke to each other directly about Iraq at regional talks in Baghdad in March. The U.S. envoy called the exchange "frank and sometimes even jovial".