WASHINGTON - The United States chided Iran Tuesday for hinting that it might skip a major conference on Iraq next month grouping the embattled nation's neighbors and major world powers.
"I'm not sure what they're afraid of," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said after Iran's foreign minister expressed reluctance to attend the Iraq meeting if it included US and other big power officials.
"If in fact that is their final position, it's rather unfortunate," McCormack said.
"It's a conference focused on Iraq, and certainly their presence there would be one signal that they truly have an interest in seeing a more prosperous, more stable, more democratic Iraq," he said.
The ministerial meeting May 3-4 in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh will follow up on a lower level conference last month in Baghdad focused on improving security in Iraq.
The United States has accused Iran of fomenting sectarian violence in Iraq and providing weapons and support to anti-US insurgents in the country.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has indicated she would be willing to break with long-standing US policy and deal directly with her Iranian counterpart, Manouchehr Mottaki, on the Iraq issue if he attends the meeting.
Mottaki brushed the overture aside on Tuesday, saying the upcoming meeting should only involve Iraq's immediate neighbors plus key regional players Egypt and Bahrain.
He also ruled out direct talks with Rice at the conference as currently planned.
"Under these conditions this is excluded," he said.
Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zabari said Iraq had invited its neighbors plus the permanent members of the UN Security Council -- Britain, China, Japan, Russia and the United States -- as well as Japan, Canada and Germany.
McCormack suggested an Iranian boycott of the meeting would undermine Tehran's stated support for efforts to stabilize Iraq.
"We would encourage all of Iraq's neighbors to follow their words with actions," he said.
04/10/2007 19:36 GMT