Region | Iran
Iranian president Ahmadinejad arrives in Baghdad
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's plane landed Sunday in Baghdad, the start of the first-ever trip by an Iranian president to Iraq.
- Agencies
- Published: 10:20 March 2, 2008
- Image Credit:
- Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will hold talks with Iraq's top leaders during the two-day trip.
Baghdad: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's plane landed Sunday in Baghdad, the start of the first-ever trip by an Iranian president to Iraq.
A delegation of Iraqi officials gathered at Baghdad international airport to meet his flight, including Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, who told The Associated Press that Ahmadinejad plans to leave Monday morning.
Security was tight along the airport road, once among the most dangerous in this war-torn city, with Iraqi army patrols stationed every 100 meters (yards) or so. The US has said it would not be involved in providing security for Ahmadinejad's visit.
The visit gives Ahmadinejad a chance to highlight the relationship his nation has with post-Saddam Hussein Iraq - both countries are led by Shiite Muslims - while also serving as an act of defiance toward the United States, which accuses Iran of training and giving weapons to Shiite extremists.
Ahmadinejad is scheduled to meet with Iraqi President Jalal Talabani and Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki, both of whom have made official visits to Iran since taking office.
Talabani's headquarters are located right across the Tigris River from the mammoth new US Embassy in the fortified Green Zone, an area that has been repeatedly hit by mortar attacks, with the US blaming Shiite militants.
Ahmadinejad sought to reassure Iraqis ahead of the trip that Iran is not fueling violence in Iraq.
"Iran has no need to intervene in Iraq. It is friendly to all groups in Iraq. Isn't it ridiculous that those who have deployed 160,000 troops in Iraq accuse us of intervening there?" the Iranian state-run news agency, IRNA, quoted Ahmadinejad as saying.
With the trip, Ahmadinejad also may be trying to bolster his support back home ahead of parliamentary elections later this month. They are seen as referendum on the Iranian president, who has come under criticism from all sides in his country for spending too much time on anti-Western rhetoric and not enough on economic problems plaguing the country.
Jon Alterman, head of the Middle East program at Washington's Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the visit sends a "clear message to Iraqis that the Iranian influence in the country is significant and enduring."
But at the same time, "he doesn't want to threaten the Iraqis. He doesn't want to threaten Gulf states who fear that Iraq will be an Iranian satellite. He has a thin line to walk," he said.
The US has tried to downplay Ahmadinejad's visit, saying it welcomed Iran's stated policy of promoting stability but that its actions have doing just the opposite.
US President George W. Bush denied that Ahmadinejad's visit undermined US efforts to isolate Tehran but had some advice for what Al Maliki should say to the Iranian leader.
"He's a neighbor. And the message needs to be, quit sending in sophisticated equipment that's killing our citizens," Bush told reporters at his ranch in Crawford, Texas.
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