With Summit, Iran Demonstrates Its Regional Clout

[billyoc]

Source: New York Times

CAIRO — Iran hosted its first three-way summit meeting on Sunday with Pakistan and Afghanistan to discuss cooperation on regional issues, the latest sign of Iran’s emergence as a regional power.

With Pakistan and Afghanistan fighting to hold back the rising tide of radical, Islamic insurgencies led by the Taliban, the meeting in Tehran seemed intended by Iran to assure its neighbors that working together the three could solve their problems without having to rely on the West.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran suggested that the United States was the main problem when he described “others who are alien to the nations and culture of our nations.” It was a not-too-subtle swipe, but still one that Washington’s allies from Pakistan and Afghanistan did not rebut. That served as another sign that Iran was increasingly seen as less of a threat to the West, and the region, than the prospect of the Taliban’s controlling Pakistan or Afghanistan.

“If we can save Pakistan and Afghanistan from these problems, from extremism,” President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan said in comments broadcast in Iran, “then such trilateral meetings are meaningful."

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/25/world/middleeast/25iran.html?_r=1