Iran and Iraq ink accords, vow to put past behind

Iraq: Baghdad and Tehran pledged on Wednesday to strengthen ties and put the past behind them, even as Washington accuses Iran of supplying new and more lethal weapons to anti-US militias. Iran and Iraq, which fought a 1980-1988 war that was one of the bloodiest conflicts of the past century, killing an estimated one million people, have drawn closer since the US-led invasion of 2003.

But US officials have expressed concern at the Islamic republic's growing influence in Iraq, which is strategically important to both Tehran and Washington. "I would like to announce to all Iraqi people that we have forgotten all the pain of the past," Iran's First Vice President Mohammad Reza Rahimi told Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki at a ceremony to sign several agreements to boost cooperation in culture, technology, science, communication, health and tariffs.

"All of what Iranians love exists in Iraq," Rahimi said, referring to the most revered shrines of Shiite Islam in the Iraqi cities of Najaf and Karbala, where Iranian pilgrims throng, braving the bombings which rock Iraq each day.

"We are ready to stand beside Iraq and build this country, to provide security," Rahimi said.

Maliki owes his premiership in large part to Tehran. It was Shiite Iran that pressured its powerful Shiite proxies to throw their weight behind Maliki, after an inconclusive March 2010 election which he lost by a single vote. AFP