Randa Habib & Omar Hasan, Agence France Presse

KUWAIT CITY, 15 February 2004 — Iraq’s neighbors, gathering here for high-level talks on the postwar situation and its impact on regional security, expressed misgivings yesterday about any possible partition of the war-ravaged country.

“Everybody has concerns about the partition of Iraq,” Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al-Faisal told reporters after arriving in the Kuwaiti capital.

“(Any) partition of Iraq is a grave sin,” warned Deputy Syrian Foreign Minister Issa Darwish. But, he added: “The Iraqi people should decide their own fate. We’re not their guardians.”

Earlier, an official of one of the participating countries told reporters that Baghdad’s neighbors want “to be comfortable that Iraq has no partition plans.”

“We want Iraq to tell us clearly that there is no formula being studied for partition, that the federation talked about is administrative and not ethnic,” the official added.

Foreign ministers from Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Kuwait, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Syria, Bahrain and Egypt are attending the meeting.

“This is a very important meeting, very timely,” Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul told reporters earlier.

Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari met his regional counterparts for the first time.

“Iraq, which is attending this meeting for the first time, will request from its neighbors proof of goodwill on the level of security and cooperation,” an Arab official in Kuwait told reporters.

A senior Arab official earlier said that the forum “will allow Iraq to air its concerns and enable its neighbors to explain theirs.”

“It is important to work together for a situation where the Iraqi people regain their full sovereignty, and this should pave the way for stability,” Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmad Maher told Al-Qabas daily ahead of his arrival.

“I believe that the key issue that may achieve normality is to arrive at a settlement among Iraqis that guarantees they regain practicing full sovereignty over their united territories,” Maher said.

“The meeting will discuss the means of helping the Iraqi people in the political construction of their state and recovering their sovereignty, as well as helping with the reconstruction itself,” Maher said in Cairo before leaving for Kuwait.

“The instability prevailing in Iraq has had repercussions on the entire region, and that is why Iraq’s neighbors have concerns about Iraq’s internal political developments,” one Arab official said.

Zebari will remind his counterparts “the vital role they can play in bringing about security in Iraq, while the country prepares for elections,” said the official.

A UN mission, headed by top UN diplomat Lakhdar Brahimi, has been in Iraq assessing the feasibility of early elections, which it has since ruled out, ahead of US-led coalition plans for a June 30 transfer of power to Iraqis.

Brahimi, who arrived here Friday night to attend the meeting, has stressed the “crucial” importance of cooperation by Iraqis in resolving the country’s problems.

“For Iraq’s interim Governing Council, security signifies above all that its borders are safeguarded against infiltrators from neighboring countries,” said another Arab official.

Former Kuwaiti minister and MP Ahmad Al-Rubei called on Iraq’s neighbors to propose a practical program to assist Iraq.

“Iraqis want its neighbors to realize that a stable Iraq will be a stability factor for them, and that an Iraq with infighting, partitioned or sectarian, constitutes a national danger to the stability of all without exception,” Rubei wrote in the newspaper Al-Qabas.