BRUSSELS: Iran and NATO have held their first talks since the Iranian revolution 30 years ago, officials at the military alliance said Thursday, in a new sign of a thaw in Tehran's ties with the West.At allied headquarters in Brussels last week, an Iranian diplomat and a senior NATO official had an "informal contact" focused on Iran's neighbour Afghanistan, where the alliance is battling a stiff Taliban-led insurgency."The diplomat met with Assistant Secretary General for Political Affairs and Security Policy Martin Erdmann," chief NATO spokesman James Appathurai said."It was a first informal contact about the subject of Afghanistan," he said, adding: "We have not yet programmed a second meeting."A NATO official, speaking on condition of anonymity given the sensitive nature of the talks, said the visit by the diplomat, who was not identified, was the first "since the regime of the Shah" of Iran, which collapsed in 1979.He noted that "the Iranians are interested in possible cooperation on Afghanistan" to better confront the problems posed by opium production there and an influx of Afghan refugees across their border.
BAGHDAD: Nearly 500 U.S. Army combat engineers who specialize in clearing roads of explosives started shifting to southern Afghanistan."We are probably going to be the beginning of the influx you are going to see to Afghanistan," Lt. Col. Kevin Landers, commander of the Fort Carson, Colo.-based 4th Engineer Battalion, said as crews packed crates and cleaned vehicles for the flight to Kandahar.Obama has ordered 17,000 more U.S. soldiers and Marines to Afghanistan to bolster the 38,000 American troops already battling the resurgent Taliban."We are going to take this footprint out of Iraq," said Landers, whose battalion received word of its reassignment last month just after taking command of clearing roads in Baghdad of bombs and debris.
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