BAGHDAD — Iraqi leaders said Monday that they were seriously considering three-way talks with Iran and Syria, responding to an overture from Iran's president that raised new questions about the level of American influence here.
The talks would focus on how the two neighboring countries could help quell rising sectarian bloodshed in Iraq, according to Iraqi officials familiar with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's offer.
The invitation to a summit is a further assertion of Iran's influence in Iraq, and it comes at a time when the U.S. government is sharply divided over whether to make an appeal of its own to Iran and Syria.
Influential figures in Washington have urged the Bush administration to talk to both countries in hopes of gaining their help to bring the violence in Iraq under control. But many of President Bush's advisors oppose the idea.
White House policy has been to isolate Iran to compel the government to abandon its nuclear enrichment program and to refuse to talk with Syria until it drops its support for what the United States considers terrorist groups.
As the debate continues in Washington, Iran has stepped forward.
Iraqi President Jalal Talabani plans to travel to Tehran on Sunday to meet with Ahmadinejad to try to iron out details of a possible three-way meeting, which would include Syrian President Bashar Assad, senior Iraqi officials said Monday. The move came as Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki and Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moallem met in Baghdad and announced an agreement to reopen diplomatic relations, which were broken off in 1982.
In Washington, State Department spokesman Tom Casey sought to play down the significance of a possible three-way summit, contending that previous statements by Iranian and Syrian leaders had not proved productive.
"What we'd like to see the Iranian government do is desist, first and foremost, from negative actions it's taken in Iraq," Casey said. "As we have always said with respect to the Syrians, you know, the problem is not what they say, the problem is what they do."
Syria has served as an entry point and refuge for Sunni Arab Muslim insurgents who have carried out a steady stream of attacks on U.S. forces and the fledgling Iraqi government since the American-led invasion in 2003.
Iran, a Shiite Muslim nation, has significant influence over the Shiite militias that have increasingly attacked Iraq's minority Sunnis.
