At summit, a chat heard round the world

SHARM EL SHEIK, EGYPT —  American and Iranian officials met briefly here Friday on the sidelines of a high-level diplomatic summit, an encounter that was downplayed by U.S. officials but which illustrated the growing contact between the two countries.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki did not sit down for talks. But Rice’s senior advisor on Iraq, David Satterfield, and the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, Ryan Crocker, met briefly with an Iranian deputy minister. Their three-minute conversation was “an opportunity to exchange views about the substance of this meeting, which is how to help Iraq be more secure,” Rice said.

Crocker played down the encounter, saying it was “not substantive.” He said it was the kind of casual exchange U.S. officials had with representatives of other countries at the two-day summit on the future of Iraq.

Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari described the encounter as “a positive sign.”

“This is a process. It needs more work,” he told reporters as the conference neared its end. “There’s a lot of suspicion. There’s a lot of mistrust.”

Delegates from 60 countries participated in the summit at this Red Sea resort, discussing ways to curb violence in Iraq and agreeing on an economic aid package that includes billions of dollars in debt relief.

Beyond the soothing rhetoric, officials offered little in the way of concrete solutions to Iraq’s problems. Instead, the gathering was dominated by speculation about Rice’s willingness to meet with countries the Bush administration has shunned.

She met with Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moallem on Thursday for a half-hour conversation, the first meeting of the nations’ top diplomats in more than three years.

The new U.S. approach is significant because the administration has mostly sought to limit high-level contacts with adversary governments, believing it should isolate rather than reward them for what it considers objectionable behavior.

U.S. officials hope the new contacts will lay the groundwork for more meetings with Syria and Iran. They said they would seek such talks if they could be useful in meeting Iraq’s needs.

“The object is to help stabilize and assist Iraq .... The neighbors have a role in that,” Crocker said.

On Friday, Rice told reporters that the occasion to meet with the Iranians had not presented itself during the summit but that she “would have taken that opportunity.”

She and her Iranian counterpart exchanged courteous greetings at lunch Thursday, and U.S. officials said they thought the two might meet again later during dinner. But the Iranian minister abruptly left the dinner around the time Rice arrived.

The following day, officials from both countries said Mottaki’s early departure had not been prompted by Rice’s arrival. Rather, his religious sensibilities had been offended because Larissa Abramova, a violinist entertaining the guests, was wearing a red sleeveless dress only partially covered by a shawl.

Gibing American officials suggested that Mottaki had in fact been uneasy about the prospect of facing Rice.

“I am not sure which woman he was afraid of -- the woman in the red dress or the secretary of State,” State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said.

Rice and her aides did not say what issues Satterfield and Crocker had raised in their brief conversation with the Iranians, but U.S. officials have accused Iran of supplying weapons technology to fighters in Iraq, a charge Iranian officials deny.

“Washington should not be so irresponsible and constantly accuse others,” Mottaki said in a long and fiery speech toward the end of the conference. “The U.S. must issue a clear troop-withdrawal plan so that peace and stability can be restored.”

The final diplomatic statement from the meetings here finessed the sensitive issue of a timetable for withdrawal.

The communique called for nations to assist Iraq’s security forces, pointing out that their greater capability will “pave the way for the conclusion of the multinational forces, whose presence will not be open-ended.”

The summit did produce some steps on economic aid to Iraq, which had also been a source of tension. Days before the conference, the Sunni Muslim ruler of Saudi Arabia, King Abdullah, refused to see Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki, a Shiite Muslim, when Maliki toured the region. And Saudi delegates at the conference insisted that debt relief be tied to guarantees to protect the Sunni minority in Iraq.

Other countries pledged to forgive $30 billion of Iraqi debt, a move unlikely to have much impact since Iraq hasn’t been paying off much of it anyway.

On Friday, Rice joined officials of Mideast nations and other world powers to discuss how the group could help Iraq. She acknowledged that Iraq had suffered setbacks since the 2003 invasion and she urged officials to ensure that the summit produced more than words.

“We recognize that all has not gone according to plan,” she said. But she warned that “if we simply sit here with nothing having happened between the time we meet here in Sharm el Sheik and the next time we meet, then the world will rightly judge us badly.”

roug@latimes.com

paul.richter@latimes.com

Special correspondent Noha el Hennawy contributed to this report.