WASHINGTON, Sept 29 (AFP) - Syria has agreed to tighten its border with Iraq to prevent insurgents from entering the country, the United States said Wednesday after two days of talks in Damascus between US, Syrian and Iraqi officials.
The State Department described the meetings as "constructive and positive" but stressed that the United States wanted to see action from the Syrians to prove their commitment to the agreement and to work for the stabilization of Iraq.
"The Syrians did agree to take specific actions in coordination with Iraqi and multinational forces," spokesman Richard Boucher said. "These steps are designed to close Syria's border to individuals seeking to foment violence and destabilize Iraq.
"It is essential now that these steps be translated into action on the ground and we will measure the Syrian commitment to the stability of Iraq by the concrete steps that they take," he told reporters.
Boucher declined to comment on the specifics of the steps Syria had agreed to take but said Damascus had given Washington and the interim Iraqi government "concrete understandings" about how they would proceed to improve border security.
"We have fairly concrete understandings between the Iraqi government and the Syrian government on things like communication, how they can deploy forces, how they can move together to cut off the border traffic," he said.
The United States has long accused Syria of turning a blind eye to and even abetting the movement across its border into Iraq of insurgents seeking to battle US-led and Iraqi forces there.
Earlier this month, however, Syria expressed a willingness to tighten its border in high-level talks between President Bashar al-Assaf and the top US Middle East envoy William Burns in Damascus and a meeting in New York between Secretary of State Colin Powell and Syrian Foreign Minister Faruq al-Shara.
The meetings on Tuesday and Wednesday were an outgrowth of the earlier talks and involved representatives of the multinational forces in Iraq, the US Central Command, the Iraqi interim government and Syria.
Ahead of the talks, the US embassy in Damascus said the meetings would study "practical ways" in which the multinational forces, along with Iraqi and Syrian security services, "can cooperate to ensure that the Syrian-Iraqi border is closed to the illicit traffic of people or weapons."
Damascus has been under US sanctions for its alleged support of terrorism amid charges from Washington that it was destabilising Iraq, following Syrian opposition to the US-led invasion in 2003 that ousted Saddam Hussein.
But Powell said last week that Syria was taking a "positive" approach in addressing US concerns on securing the border with its eastern neighbour.