US to cooperate with world countries to combat ISIL, says Kerry

Baghdad (IraqiNews.com) Secretary of State John Kerry said on Monday that the Obama administration would keep the door open to confidential communications with Iran on the security crisis in Iraq, despite sarcastic criticism from Iran’s supreme leader, who said the American plan for bombing Islamic militants, their common enemy, was absurd.

Mr. Kerry acknowledged that the United States had opposed a role for Iran at the international conference here on strengthening a coalition to help the new government in Baghdad fight the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.

Both King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia and top officials from the United Arab Emirates had informed the United States that they would not attend the meeting here if Iran was present, said Mr. Kerry, who also stressed that the United States would not coordinate militarily with the Iranians.

But Mr. Kerry also said that American officials were still prepared to talk to Iranian officials about Iraq and Syria, including on the margins of the negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program, which will resume in New York on Thursday.

President François Hollande of France greeted President Fuad Masum of Iraq at the Elysée Palace in Paris on Monday.

Just because Iranians were not invited to the Paris conference, Mr. Kerry said, “doesn’t mean that we are opposed to the idea of communicating to find out if they will come on board or under what circumstances or whether there is the possibility of a change.”

Mr. Kerry said that “having a channel of communication on one of the biggest issues in the world today is common sense.”

Still, Mr. Kerry acknowledged that previous attempts made by Deputy Secretary of State William J. Burns to draw the Iranians into a discussion of regional issues on the margins of earlier rounds of talks had not been productive.

“The confidential discussions never got to that sort of substance,” Mr. Kerry said. /End/