Maliki seeks Iran help to rebuild Iraq

Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said on Sunday that he hoped Iran would help rebuild his conflict-torn country by boosting economic ties. "We agreed to set up a joint service contract company with Iran... when Iraq witnesses stability and when the national unity government starts the reconstruction," Maliki told reporters as he wrapped up a two-day visit. "I personally hope that trade ties between the two countries will focus on quicker reconstruction and progress," in Iraq, Maliki added at the end of his fourth visit to Iran since he took office in 2006. Iraq and Iran also agreed to establish a high-ranking joint committee to pursue bolstering economic ties between the two neighbors, Maliki said. The committee will be headed by Iraqi Commerce Minister Abdul Falah al-Sudani and Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki, he added. Iran's first vice-president, Parviz Davoudi, said meanwhile that the volume of trade between Tehran and Baghdad now stands at around four billion dollars, which they both hope to raise to 10 billion dollars. Maliki arrived on Saturday seeking investments to rebuild his country which suffered considerable damage in the 2003 US-led invasion and the violence that followed. Iran and Shiite-majority Iraq waged a war between 1980 and 1988 in which around one million people died. Ties have warmed considerably since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein's Sunni-dominated regime by US-led forces. Maliki's fourth visit to Iran since he took office in 2006 is his first since the December 14 signing of a bilateral security agreement for US troops to remain in Iraq until the end of 2011 -- a deal that irked Tehran. Iran warned Iraq that an "intensely treacherous" United States habitually broke such pacts. Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei "pointed at the American government's mischief and efforts to consolidate its domination and plunder the resources of the country," state television said. Khamenei added: "The Americans are intensely treacherous and break pacts to the extent that they do not have real friendship even with their close allies in the region." Khamenei, the Islamic Republic's top authority, repeated Iran's view that the presence of U.S. and British forces was largely to blame for violence and other problems in Iraq. "The presence of American and British forces in Iraq is the principal source of various problems including terrorism in that country," state radio quoted Khamenei as saying.