Probably Iranian and US delegates will do a little more than just cross paths. Probably they’ll do more than nod and wave. Probably they will set up further meetings where the US government will be willingly stalled against effective action against Iran by the Iranian government. Probably Afghanistan issues and Pakistan’s Islamic jihad territories will come into the bargain.
WASHINGTON, March 20 (Itar-Tass) — The United States will attend the conference on Afghanistan in Moscow later this month and does not rule out a possibility of the first unofficial contact with Iranian representatives on the sidelines of the meeting under the auspices of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.
Acting State Department spokesman Robert Wood said on Thursday “there are no plans for any substantive meetings with the Iranians.” However, he did not rule out that representatives of both countries may cross paths at the conference.
“It’s not unusual for U.S. and Iranian officials to… cross paths during a multilateral meeting, so I’m not going to rule anything in or rule anything out. It is a conference about Afghanistan and its neighbors. Iran is certainly a neighbor of Afghanistan, and so we’ll see,” he told a regular briefing.
Wood said Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for South and Central Asian Affairs Patrick Moon would attend the conference in Moscow.
The United States believes the conference on Afganistan is an important event as it will help the “international community to better the situation on the ground, better coordinate our activities, see what types of things we can do together to help make things better for the people of Afghanistan,” according to Wood.
“We think it’s important, we’re glad we were invited, and we look forward to attending and, hopefully, we can get something constructive out of this conference,” he said.
