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Kerry Tells Iraq to Help Stop Arms Shipments to Syria In ‘Spirited’ Talks, Kerry Tells Iraq to Help Stop Arms Shipments to Syria
(about 7 hours later)
BAGHDAD — Secretary of State John Kerry told Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki during a visit to Baghdad on Sunday that Iraq must take steps to stop the shipment of Iranian weapons to Syria if it wanted to participate in broader discussions about that country’s future. BAGHDAD — Secretary of State John Kerry told Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, the prime minister of Iraq, on Sunday that Iraq must take steps to stop Iran from shipping arms to Syria through Iraqi airspace. But an hour and 40 minutes of discussions here, which Mr. Kerry said were sometimes “spirited,” failed to yield a breakthrough on the issue.
Mr. Kerry’s visit was the first by an American secretary of state since Hillary Rodham Clinton went to Iraq in 2009, and it came amid growing concern over Iraq’s role in the Syrian conflict. As Mr. Kerry prepared to leave Iraq afterward, he warned that the Iranian flights were sustaining the government of the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, and were undermining Iraq’s standing with American lawmakers.
Flights of Iranian weapons to Syria through Iraqi airspace, which a senior State Department official said were occurring on nearly a daily basis, have been crucial for the government of President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, which faces increasing pressure from rebel fighters. Mr. Kerry said he had a spirited discussion with Mr. Maliki about the issue, but there was no tangible sign that the Iraqis would alter their position. “Anything that supports President Assad is problematic,” Mr. Kerry said at a news conference here, where he voiced hope that progress might be made in resolving the issue.
Mr. Kerry, speaking at a news conference at the American Embassy here after meeting with the prime minister, said he stressed that supporting Mr. Assad by allowing the flights is “problematic” and did not represent the “common goals” of the United States and Iraq. Mr. Kerry’s visit to Iraq on Sunday was the first by an American secretary of state since 2009. He came at a time when concerns are growing over Iraq’s role in the crisis in Syria, and when the United States’ influence in Iraq has been dwindling.
The air corridor over Iraq has emerged as a main route of military aid to Mr. Assad’s government. The shipments include rockets, antitank missiles, rocket-propelled grenades and mortars, and Iranian personnel, according to American intelligence officials. There are supply lines on the ground as well. The State Department has been sharply reducing its huge presence here, and its diplomats have seemed powerless to affect the course of events on two of Washington’s pressing concerns: Iraqi tolerance for the Iranian weapons shipments to Syria and issuance of arrest warrants for certain Sunni leaders by the Shiite-dominated Iraqi government.
Iran has as an enormous stake in Syria, which is its staunchest Arab ally and has provided a channel for Iran’s support to the Islamist movement Hezbollah in Lebanon. The Obama administration has been less engaged in Iraq lately, as it has sought to “normalize” relations, and the Iraqis have distanced themselves from their former occupiers. And there is a sense among many Iraqi officials that the Americans are no longer willing to marshal the influence they still have.
Syria is also important to the Shiite-dominated Iraqi government, led by Mr. Maliki. Fearing that Mr. Assad’s overthrow would lead to Sunni control and embolden the Iraqi Sunnis who oppose him, Mr. Maliki has been seen as tolerating the Iranian flights. “The Americans are not using claws or teeth,” Mowaffak al-Rubaie, Mr. Maliki’s former national security adviser, said shortly before Mr. Kerry’s visit.
American officials have repeatedly insisted that the Iraqis demand that the Iranian flights must land so that they can be inspected. But the Iraqis have only carried out two inspections since July, the State Department official said. One was of an Iranian flight that was on its way back to Tehran after delivering its cargo in Syria. Iran has said the flights are merely carrying humanitarian aid. A headline Sunday in the Iraqi newspaper Al Mada referring to President Obama’s trip last week to the Middle East read, “Obama Visited the Region but Ignored Iraq.” The article noted that “Iraq was not even mentioned in Obama’s speeches to the region” and said that “all the protests and bombings in Iraq haven’t come to the attention of Obama.”
Iraq has yet to develop an air force, and since the United States military left the country in 2011, American warplanes no longer patrol Iraq’s skies. The Iranian flights, which are vitally important for Mr. Assad’s forces, represent a major challenge for American strategy concerning Syria. Mr. Kerry has repeatedly said that the Obama administration wants to change Mr. Assad’s “calculation” that he can prevail, and persuade him to relinquish power and agree to a political transition.
The Iranian flights pose a major challenge for American strategy on Syria. Mr. Kerry has repeatedly said that Obama administration officials want to change Mr. Assad's calculation that he can prevail militarily, and they want to persuade him to relinquish power and agree to a political transition. But Robert Ford, the senior State Department official on Syria policy, told Congress last week that Iranian and Russian military assistance has fortified Mr. Assad's belief that his military can still win. But Robert Ford, the American ambassador to Syria and the senior State Department official dealing with the Syrian opposition, told Congress last week that Iran has been “plussing up” its aid and strengthening Mr. Assad’s belief that he can defeat the rebels militarily. A senior State Department official traveling with Mr. Kerry said that planes carrying Iranian arms reach Syria almost daily.
As a senator, Mr. Kerry suggested that the United States should consider linking its support for Iraq with Mr. Maliki’s willingness to order the inspection of the Iranian flights. "If so many people have entreated the government to stop and that doesn’t seem to be having an impact,” Mr. Kerry said in September when he was chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, “that sort of alarms me a little bit and seems to send a signal to me maybe we should make some of our assistance or some of our support contingent on some kind of appropriate response.” American officials have repeatedly insisted to Iraq that it should request that the Iranian flights land and be inspected. But the Iraqis have done so only twice since July, the State Department official said. In one of those cases, the plane was on its way back to Tehran from Syria, and its cargo was already delivered.
As secretary of state, Mr. Kerry has adopted a less confrontational approach. Iran has said the flights carry only humanitarian aid.
Concerning Iraq’s fraught political scene, Mr. Kerry pushed Mr. Maliki to reconsider a recent decision to postpone provincial elections in Anbar and Nineveh Provinces, where protests are continuing by Sunnis — which dominate the two provinces but which are a minority in Iraq as a whole. The Iraqi government has justified the delay by citing security concerns. As a senator and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Mr. Kerry suggested that the United States consider linking its support for Iraq with Mr. Maliki’s willingness to order inspections of Iranian flights. “If so many people have entreated the government to stop, and that doesn’t seem to be having an impact,” Mr. Kerry said in September, “that sort of alarms me a little bit, and seems to send a signal to me, maybe we should make some of our assistance or some of our support contingent on some kind of appropriate response.”
“Everyone needs to vote simultaneously,” he said on Sunday, adding that “no country knows more about voting under difficult circumstances than Iraq.” The elections had been scheduled for April 20. But as a secretary of state, Mr. Kerry has been less confrontational. In his meeting with Mr. Maliki on Sunday, Mr. Kerry argued that Iraq ought to have a role in international discussions about Syria’s post-Assad future, but to secure that role, it was important that Iraq stop facilitating aid for Mr. Assad.
Mr. Kerry also met with Osama al-Nujaifi, a Sunni who is the speaker of the Iraqi Parliament, and spoke by telephone with Massoud Barzani, the leader of the Kurdish Regional Government, who is in Erbil. “We agreed to try to provide more information with respect to this,” Mr. Kerry said afterward, alluding to Iraqi demands that the American government share with Iraq its intelligence on the Iranian flights, to show that they were carrying arms.
A leading Sunni, Rafi al-Essawi, recently resigned his post as finance minister to protest Mr. Maliki’s reluctance to share power with Sunni leaders. A warrant has been issued for Mr. Essawi's arrest — on accusations that he has links to terrorists, which senior American officials have denied — and he has reportedly sought refuge with Sunni tribes in Anbar Province. Whether that will sway Mr. Maliki is unclear. Iran has an enormous stake in Syria: it is Iran’s staunchest Arab ally and a conduit for supporting Hezbollah, the Lebanese Islamist movement. Iraq, too, has a lot at stake there. The prospect of a rebel victory in Syria and the rise of a Sunni-led government, Mr. Maliki fears, might embolden Sunnis in Iraq. So his Shiite-dominated government has increasingly sided with Mr. Assad as well.
Mr. Kerry did not specifically discuss Mr. Essawi’s case with Mr. Maliki, but he did have a broad conversation with the prime minister about human rights concerns, aides said. American promises to help shape a stable democracy in Syria have been met with skepticism by some Iraqi officials. In an interview late in 2012, Sheikh Humam Hamoudi, the chairman of the Iraqi Parliament’s foreign affairs committee, recalled a visit in September from A. Elizabeth Jones, the acting assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern Affairs. “What she said was that they would educate the Syrians on how to be a democracy,” Mr. Hamoudi said, adding with a hint of sarcasm, “just like what happened in Iraq.”
The trip comes as American influence in the country has begun to recede. The former defense secretary Leon E. Panetta told the United States’ special inspector general on Iraq reconstruction that the withdrawal of American forces in 2011 had limited Washington’s influence over Mr. Maliki, according to a report issued this month by the inspector general. Concerning Iraq’s fraught domestic politics, which lurch from crisis to crisis, Mr. Kerry encouraged Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish lawmakers to cooperate, and pressed the Iraqi government to reconsider its recent decision to postpone provincial elections in two Sunni-dominated provinces — Anbar and Nineveh — where street protests have erupted in recent months.
Ryan Crocker, the former American ambassador in Baghdad, has urged the Obama administration to step up its engagement with Iraqi leaders. "What it is time for," Mr. Crocker told a conference at the Carnegie Endowment on International Peace last week, is "sustained engagement." “Everyone needs to vote simultaneously,” Mr. Kerry said on Sunday, adding that “no country knows more about voting under difficult circumstances than Iraq.” The elections had been scheduled for April 20.
Aides to Mr. Kerry said that was one purpose of his trip. Mr. Kerry also asked Sunni leaders to give up their boycott of participation in the Iraqi cabinet. He met with Osama al-Nujaifi, a Sunni who is the speaker of the Iraqi Parliament, and spoke by telephone with Massoud Barzani, the leader of the Kurdish regional government, who is in Erbil.
“It’s an important moment,” Mr. Kerry said at the start of a meeting with Mr. Nujaifi, alluding to the stalled efforts at political reconciliation. “There’s a lot happening, and a lot not happening.”