The convening by the Iraqi government of a regional conference on the country's future has provided the US with a welcome means of executing a U-turn on its adamant refusal to talk directly to Iran and Syria. Both the US and British governments and other permanent members of the Security Council will attend the conference, presumably as "honorary neighbours".
"We do have a regional approach," secretary of state Condoleezza Rice told the senate foreign relations committee defensively in January. "It is to work with those governments that share our view of where the Middle East should be going." And to isolate the others, notably Iran, for its alleged arming of insurgents, and Syria, for the haven it provides for terrorist groups .
But, in the small print of the Bush rejection of the Iraq Study Group recommendation that the US should engage with Syria and Iran, was always a get-out clause. It allowed for the possibility of a forum at which they could meet not across a table, but around it, with others. So it is "not really a U-turn at all", a face-saving logic that Democrats, though applauding the move, deride as simply a cynical attempt to soothe congressional doubts about a $100 billion supplemental Iraq spending request.
Yet, the US about-face also reflects the intractability of the military situation in Iraq and the strategic changes it is implementing there, and a distinctly more pragmatic line that is manifest in all its diplomacy since the appointment of Robert Gates as defence secretary.
The initial meeting will be at ambassadorial level, to be followed by a ministerial one, perhaps as early as April, attended by Ms Rice. Her spokesman has refused to rule out bilaterals with Syria and Iran, but discussions with Iran on its nuclear programme, unless uranium enrichment is first suspended, are definitely out.
The conference, which will discuss economic, security and political issues, is an important recognition of mutual interdependence. Syria and Iran, no less than Turkey, have strong interests in preventing the disintegration of Iraq. Success will be measured not by turnout, however, but in the manifestation of a real political will to get results, as Downing Street observed in its response to the calling of the meeting. Results, not just in Iraq, but in Lebanon, the West Bank and Gaza, the statement continued, crucially and correctly linking peace in Iraq to other regional issues. That should mean action by the Syrians and Iranians to assist in stabilising Iraq, and to curb the activities of proxies elsewhere. But it also means long-overdue pressure by the US on Israel to return Golan to Syria and engage with the new Palestinian government.