Pat Dollard | Young Americans

It’s an AP report, I didn’t have time to do a bias check, so make the calls on your own. Just to note, in general, I trust my readers to see the byline and make the necessary “read between the lines” and “bias notations” on their own. I like to think I have a lot of savvy, right thinking people reading this website who regularly do that.

BAGHDAD (AP) - U.S. and Iranian officials will meet Thursday to discuss Iraq’s security for the fourth time, just days after Iran’s president demanded in Baghdad that American troops withdraw, Iraqi and Iranian officials said.

Iran’s state news agency, IRNA, reported that the Iranian delegation for the talks arrived in Baghdad on Wednesday. It quoted the delegation chief, Reza Amiri Moghaddam, as saying that the talks with the U.S. would take place the following day.

“The Islamic Republic of Iran attaches great significance to the Iraqi security and will spare no efforts to materialize this objective,” Moghaddam was quoted by IRNA as saying.

Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Barham Saleh said that the fourth round of U.S.-Iran discussions, which are brokered by Iraq, would begin “this week.” He was not more specific, but an Iraqi government official said the session would take place Thursday. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release the information.

Officials at the U.S. embassy in Baghdad referred questions about the talks to the Iraqi government.

The U.S. and Iranian ambassadors held the first round of talks in May, a rare meeting between the two countries, which have not had formal relations since the taking of hostages at the U.S. embassy after Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution.

The sides met again late last summer at the ambassadorial level, and there has been one other meeting at the expert level.

Another round of expert-level talks had been slated for Feb. 15 but Iraq postponed the discussions. Thursday’s discussions also are to be at the expert level.

The U.S has repeatedly accused Iran of training and funding extremists in Iraq’s Shiite majority who attack American forces and rivals in the nation’s Sunni minority.

Ahmadinejad dismissed the accusations this week, and bashed the U.S. repeatedly, saying its presence in Iraq was a “humiliation” and said it should leave.

However, he left the door open to further discussions with the Americans, saying at a news conference that he couldn’t predict whether there would be more talks in the future.

___