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UN Invites Iran to Syria Talks, Raising Objections from the U.S.
(New York Times) Somini Sengupta and Michael R. Gordon - The announcement by Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary general, that he had invited Iran to a peace conference to end the war in Syria drew strong objections on Sunday from American officials, who suggested that Iran had not met all the conditions for attending and that the invitation might need to be withdrawn. American officials pointed out that Iran had not publicly accepted the formal mandate for the conference: to establish "by mutual consent" a transitional body to govern Syria. Iran has long insisted that it will participate in talks only if there are no preconditions and has not accepted that President Assad must leave office. "Given that Iranian forces and their Shia militias are deployed on the ground backing up Assad, it means another Assad backer will be present at this meeting," said Andrew J. Tabler, an expert on Syria at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Syria's political opposition said that it would not attend "unless Ban Ki-moon retracts Iran's invitation."