“This is a step in the right direction,” MP Muthana Amin told Rudaw on Friday. “Holding regional dialogues for producing more stability and mutual understanding and exchanging interests in a healthy way is one of the priorities of Iraq’s policy and it needs to work on it.”
“Moreover, the arrival of allied countries or countries with an international position, with economic capacity, and a strong diplomacy as observers to this conference is again a diplomatic achievement,” he added, but cautioned that whether or not the summit will be “just a show,” remains to be seen.
The Baghdad Conference for Cooperation and Partnership on Saturday comes as Iraq is hoping to bolster its standing as a regional mediator and create economic and social ties after years of conflict and foreign influence within its borders.
It is organized in cooperation with Paris and French President Emmanuel Macron will attend. Leaders of Iran, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Kuwait, Jordan, Qatar, Egypt, and the United Arab Emirates have been invited.
Iran’s newly-minted foreign minister will attend. “An Iranian delegation led by Foreign Minister Amir-Abdollahian is to be dispatched to take part in a meeting on supporting Iraq,” foreign ministry spokesperson Saeed Khatibzadeh said on Friday.
Hossein Amir-Abdollahian’s nomination to the post of foreign minister was approved by the Iranian parliament on Wednesday. The Baghdad summit will be the first trip abroad for the conservative diplomat.
Iraqi Foreign Minister Fuad Hussein on August 10 extended an invitation to new Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi to attend the summit, which could further talks between Iran and Saudi Arabia that Baghdad has been brokering.
Speaking to media on Thursday, Iraqi President Barham Salih said it is time to build a new regional system, based on security and economic interdependence.
“Iraq has long suffered from crises, disasters of the wars, tyranny and terrorism and for being turned into a battleground for other countries to settle their scores, where the whole region [is] being harmed,” he said. “The time has come to move beyond the previous phase and work towards laying the foundations of regional stability which could be achieved by encouraging our common interests linking all the states of the region and by addressing mutual challenges faced by the region.”
Political analysts see the conference as a good opportunity for discussions about multiple ongoing crises in the region.
“I think this summit is of course decisive in this region. In other words, we will discuss many ongoing crises that have happened in the past few years,” said political analyst Mohammed Zahir Gul.
“This conference can be a good opportunity to solve the issues that have happened in Iraq in the past two decades,” said Azad Mohammediani, another analyst. He added that the gathering could have a calming or stabilizing effect in the region, especially with the unfolding crisis in Afghanistan where the Taliban has taken over following a US withdrawal and collapse of the government.
One of Iraq’s neighbours is not invited - Syria.
Syrian state media earlier this month reported that the chairman of Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) Falih al-Fayyadh delivered a message to Bashar al-Assad on behalf of the Iraqi prime minister regarding the summit, but the Iraqi foreign ministry denied extending an invitation to the Syrian president.
“Syria is not a healthy state nor does it have control of its borders… it’s a state that has a lot of problems with the states that are participating, but they are important, their participation is much more important than Syria,” said the MP Amin. “The participation of Syria will damage the conference, not be the reason for its success.”
Additional reporting by Hawraz Gulpi
