Iranian officials are extremely cautious about their dealings with the new Iraq, reports Azadeh Moaveni from Tehran Frustrated by months of quarrel over border security, the interior ministers of Iraq, its immediate neighbours and Egypt, met in Tehran last week to determine a joint strategy over policing the flow of foreign fighters and money that are allegedly feeding the Iraqi insurgency. The conference's final statement, drafted by the interior ministers, is intended as a blueprint for intelligence sharing on insurgent groups. It includes a commitment to increasing cooperation on border security, transit points and cross-border movement. For much of this year, Iraqi officials have charged that Tehran's lax border security is encouraging the violence that wracks the country. These claims culminated in the Iraqi Defence Minister Hazem Al- Shaalan's pronouncement that Iran was still Iraq's greatest enemy. "We are suffering from a difficult situation," Iraqi Vice-President Ibrahim Al-Jaafari told the conference's opening session. This was followed by pointedly telling his hosts that Iran was not doing enough to "keep foreign terrorists out of Iraq". The criticism infuriated Iranian officials with state television broadcasting the row on the evening news. Iranian Interior Minister Abdolvahed Mousavi Lari retorted that Iraq was negligent in its handling of the Mujahidin Khalq, an Iranian opposition group deemed a terrorist organisation by both Tehran and the US State Department. While its members have been detained in Iraq since the war, they are protected by the US military under the Geneva Convention. Officially, the verbal exchange led nowhere given that those ultimately charged with such matters, Iran's Revolutionary Guard and the American military, do not attend such summits, nor do they talk to each other. However, a measure of the open rancor was planned, intended for an Iraqi audience. For former exiles such as Al-Jaafari -- seeking more street credibility ahead of the January elections -- harsh words with Iran dilutes the taint of their past relationship. But disagreements over sensitive security procedures produced very real strain. On the summit's first day, Saudi Interior Minister Prince Nayef told the official Saudi Press Agency that his government wanted Iraqi authorities to hand over captured nationals for trial in Saudi Arabia. In response, Iraqi Interior Minister Falah Al-Naqib insisted that Arab fighters should face Iraqi courts. The fate of detainees was left unresolved in the final statement. The ministers also left hanging an Iranian offer to train and equip Iraqi border police. The 1,600km border, over whose precise contours the two countries fought a grisly eight-year war, is a challenge to control, according to Tehran. Iraqi officials acknowledge that its vastness and the herd-like traffic of Iranian pilgrims to the holy cities of Najaf and Karbala make the border impossible to seal. But they maintain Tehran could do a better job, if it chose to do so. This unwillingness, they say, fits into a large pattern of Iranian disingenuous in its security dealings with Iraq. Given the eight years of open war and over two decades of bitter enmity, a psychological barrier has developed where trust should abide. As long as hard-line elements within the Tehran regime stoke the insurgency through ties with a variety of insurgent groups, Iraqi officials who deal with the Iranian government say they are in a bind. "We tell them 'Look. Just because you don't see it doesn't mean it's not a reality,'" said an Iraqi politician who meets Iranian officials regularly. He did not wish to be named. Western diplomats in Tehran say their counterparts in the Foreign Ministry often lack intelligence on the activities of the Revolutionary Guard in Iraq. These activities run counter to the government's official line which promotes stability. "When you're following two separate policies, trying to achieve incompatible objectives, tension is inevitable," a Western diplomat noted. This chorus of voices within the regime, as Iraqi officials privately complain, makes it impossible to have just one Iranian interlocutor. As a result it is very difficult for such security conferences to translate to cooperation on the ground. Iran's public commitment to easing the chaos in Iraq has been undercut in recent weeks by the inflammatory comments of regime officials who champion jihad and resistance in Friday prayer sermons. Earlier this year, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei delivered a particularly fierce sermon. He lambasted the Muslim world for not standing up against "the bloody slaughter in Falluja", and urged action, support and mass protest. On the heels of that call, a shadowy group called The Headquarters for Commemorating Martyrs of the Global Islamic Movement emerged and began signing up volunteers for suicide attacks in Iraq. Just one day after the interior minister meeting in Tehran, the group erected a stand at a sprawling cemetery in the capital for recruitment. A throng of masked men and women gathered around in the overcast chill, declaring readiness to carry out their religious duty to fight occupation. Though with its theatrical presentation and provocative invocation of America's worst nightmares -- the group having also erected a monument to the 1983 attack on US Marine barracks in Lebanon -- their spirit is more propaganda than practice. Yet Iraqi officials and foreign diplomats are wise not to simply dismiss them as an illusory threat. Backing their caution they point to the group's links to uniformed military commanders of the Revolutionary Guard as a worrisome indicator of the dual- policy they maintain Iran is pursuing in Iraq.
