BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad hailed a new chapter in ties with Iraq and took a jab at the United States over its policies in the Middle East during a landmark visit to Baghdad on Sunday.
Ahmadinejad is the first Iranian president to go to Iraq since Saddam Hussein launched an eight-year war on Iran in 1980, in which 1 million people died. He is also the first leader from the region to visit since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.
His two-day trip to a country where its long-time enemy the United States has more than 150,000 troops is as much about symbolism as about cementing economic and cultural ties between the neighbours, both run by Shi’ite majorities.
He rejected long-standing U.S. accusations, repeated by President George W. Bush on Saturday, that Iran is arming Shi’ite militias in Iraq who kill American soldiers.
“We tell Mr. Bush that accusing others will increase the problems of America in the region and will not solve them,” Ahmadinejad said in translated remarks at a news conference with Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.
“The Americans have to understand the facts of the region. Iraqi people do not like America.”
