President Obama yesterday crashed a meeting between Biden and Masoud Barzani, president of the Kurdistan region of Iraq. The president and vice president encouraged Barzani’s “continued engagement in the Iraqi political process, under the auspices of Iraq’s constitution,” according to the White House.
The president’s sudden interest in the meeting was not without reason: Iraqi officials have called off a reconciliation conference that was planned for today. The conference “was supposed to ease tensions between Shiite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and the Sunni and Kurdish factions in his coalition government,” WaPo’s Liz Sly reports from Baghdad. http://wapo.st/I546xK
“The cancellation of the conference highlighted the danger that the increasingly intractable political crisis in Iraq will draw in the country’s neighbors at a time of increasing polarization in the region over how to address the unrest in Syria,” Sly reports. Al-Maliki has defended the actions of the Syrian government even as powerful players in the region, including Saudi Arabia, have backed plans to fund rebel forces.