US to consider Bahrain's call to include GCC in future talks with Iran

Manama: Bahrain's insistence that the talks between Iran and the world's major powers include the Gulf Cooperation Council will be conveyed to the US administration, a senior US official has said.

"We will take the Bahraini viewpoint to Washington," Assistant Secretary for Near Eastern Affairs Jeffrey Feltman said in Manama at the end of the Manama Dialogue.

Washington already briefs Bahrain, Egypt and Jordan before and after the talks with Iran, he said.

Bahrain's foreign minister Shaikh Khalid Bin Ahmad Al Khalifa on Saturday said at a security conference in Manama that the talks had failed because the process was flawed and they did not include the GCC states, a region primarily concerned with the outcome.

"Somebody's trying to do business while we're not there, while we're not present in that room. This is a fundamental mistake of how these talks were conducted. I think that is the main reason of why the talks failed," Shaikh Khalid said, stressing that the GCC countries were the most directly concerned with the talks between Iran and the major powers, but were not involved or consulted.

"There is an urgent need for regional cooperation to tackle the challenges we face. In formulating and implementing such cooperation, I believe that we can and should draw from current and past examples of successful cooperation in and around our region, be it Turkey's commitment to 'zeroing in on its problems with neighbours', or the mechanism of the 6+2 meetings which has expanded gradually to include Iraq and Morocco, or finally the effective working relationship between Bahrain and Iran to swiftly address any possible tensions that may arise," Shaikh Khalid said.