By Daniel Williams
May 3 (Bloomberg) -- Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice met privately for 30 minutes with Syria's Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem, opening talks with a Middle East adversary that the Bush administration had long rejected.
No similar talks will be held with officials from Iran, another country at odds with the United States, Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, said in a briefing to reporters.
``Syria clearly says stability in Iraq is in their interest, but actions speak louder than words,'' Rice told reporters after the meeting. ``We have to see how this develops. We don't want to have difficult relations with Syria. There needs to be a better basis for relations, concrete steps that show on the Iraq issue that there will actually be action.''
The last high-level meeting took place in January 2005, between then-Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage and Syria's President Bashar al-Assad.
Al-Moallem stayed away from the morning session of the conference, and when he arrived in mid-afternoon, was ushered quickly into a meeting room with Rice, a U.S. State Department official said.
``We talked about Iraqi border issues and bilateral relations,'' al-Moallem told reporters as he left the discussion. ``This meeting is only a start. We hope the Americans are serious because we in Damascus are serious.''
Rice said the meeting with al-Moallem was ``professional,'' adding, ``I didn't lecture him, and he didn't lecture me.''
U.S. Accusations
The Bush administration has accused Syria of facilitating the passage of anti-U.S. fighters and terrorists into Iraq. The administration also implicated Syria in a series of assassinations in Lebanon, including the 2005 car-bomb killing of former Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri. Hariri had been pressing for the withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon, where they had been stationed since the end of the country's 1975-1990 civil war.
Talks yesterday between Syrian Deputy Foreign Minister Ahmad Arnous and Rice's Iraq policy coordinator, David Satterfield, heralded today's meeting, Syria's official SANA news agency said.
In effect, the Bush administration has gone part way toward complying with one of the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group chaired last year by former Secretary of State James A. Baker. The bipartisan committee advised that the U.S. talk with Syria and Iran about pacifying Iraq.
`Ostrich Policy'
In Washington, the Democratic chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee praised Rice for meeting with her Syrian counterpart.
``This is a marked improvement in the administration's ostrich policy approach, and a tacit admission of how wrong it was last month in criticizing the speaker of the House and congressional colleagues, including myself, for going to Damascus,'' Representative Tom Lantos of California said in a statement.
Crocker, the ambassador to Iraq, was vague about whether more bilateral talks with Syria will be held. ``It's going to be an evolving situation,'' he said.
State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said Rice exchanged greetings with Iran's Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki today, and that no policy issues were discussed.
The administration has accused military elements in Iran of arming Shiite Muslim militias in Iraq, while stopping short of saying that the Iranian leadership is directing the effort.
Crocker said that neither ``we nor the Iranians are actively seeking a bilateral meeting here.''
To contact the reporter on this story: Daniel Williams in Sharm el-Sheik at
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