Meeting in Egypt

Countries bordering Iraq and those with a stake in its future meet in Egypt on Thursday and Friday to discuss how to contain the conflict and prevent it sucking in Iraq's neighbors.

While diplomats are skeptical security can improve inside Iraq in the short term, some hope the meeting will increase pressure to end external support for different factions and instead emphasize programs to help rebuild the country.

The highlight of the two days of talks would be a meeting on the sidelines between U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki, a first at this level since the Bush administration took office in 2001.

Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshiyar Zebari told he expected Rice to have talks in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh with Mottaki and Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moualem.

Such meetings would mark a reversal of policy by the Bush administration, which rejected last year a high-level commission's recommendation that it open a dialogue with the two governments to help ease the situation in Iraq.

The United States has ruled out what Rice called "full-scale negotiations" with Iran, widely regarded as the neighboring country most able to influence events inside Iraq.

The first day of talks will look at a project dubbed the Iraqi Compact -- a five-year plan offering Iraq financial, political and technical support in return for various reforms.

The key reforms, which U.S. officials want passed soon, are a revenue-sharing oil law, a law to allow members of the old ruling Baath party back into public life, and a governorate elections law that will set a date for provincial polls.

The United States hopes these benchmarks will promote reconciliation and draw minority Sunni Arabs away from the insurgency and back into the political process.

The second day will bring together Iraq and its immediate neighbours -- Iran, Turkey, Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, together with Egypt as host.

Previous meetings of the neighbours have focused on border security and the smuggling of arms and personnel into Iraq in support of the mainly Sunni Muslim insurgency led by al-Qaeda.

There are limits to what the neighbours can do to reduce the violence in Iraq, which has a dynamic of its own, driven in part by indigenous Iraqi opposition to the U.S. and British military presence in their country.