SHARM EL-SHEIK, Egypt - Iraq emerged from a vital conference Friday with a promise from Arab countries to stop foreign militants from joining Iraq's insurgency. But Baghdad didn't get the debt relief it wanted, and its Sunni Arab neighbors demand Iraq's Shiite-led government enact tough political reforms.
The two-day gathering of top diplomats from the region, the United States and around the world was the warmest yet between Iraq and Arab countries, but suspicions remained between the two sides.
"We will see the extent of the seriousness and commitment among these nations to what they signed today," Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki told reporters. "If these promises are not kept, we will watch it, and there will be no reason to hold any further conferences."
Baghdad also did not achieve another goal -- progress in easing tensions between the United States and Iran, whose disputes Iraqis say are fueling the chaos in their country. Despite urging from the Iraqis, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki did not hold talks -- only exchanged wary pleasantries over lunch.
But Rice met with another regional rival of the U.S., Syria. She held a half hour of talks Thursday with its foreign minister, urging Damascus to do more to control its notoriously porous border with Iraq.
"Everyone has an agenda, and it has damaged the situation in Iraq," al-Maliki said of differences among the U.S., Iran and Syria. "We had hoped for a dialogue. Squabble anywhere else in the world, but not on Iraqi soil."
The United States accuses Iran of arming militants in Iraq and says Syria is allowing Sunni insurgents to enter the war-torn country. Both countries deny the accusations, and Mottaki on Friday said the U.S. military presence in Iraq was the cause of the bloodshed.
Al-Maliki's government has long pressed its neighbors to do more to stop fighters from infiltrating from their territory, and the Shiites who dominate his coalition accuse Arab countries of being biased toward Iraq's Sunni Arab minority.
Arab governments, in turn, blame Shiite discrimination against Sunnis for fueling the insurgency and fear Shiite power will boost the power of mainly Shiite Iran in the region. They demand al-Maliki enact reforms to give Sunni Arabs a greater role -- including amending the constitution, bringing more Sunnis into the military and government and ending the purge of former members of Saddam Hussein's ousted Sunni-led Baath party.
In a declaration released at the end of the conference Friday, both sides repeated promises to meet the demands of the other. The declaration called for all states "prevent the use by terrorists of their territory" and bar their transit.
Iraq promised to "continue constructive steps" on reviewing the constitution and the program to exclude Baathists from key jobs.
But rifts remained. Notably, the foreign minister of regional Sunni powerhouse Saudi Arabia did not meet with al-Maliki, who held private talks with each of the other foreign ministers.
Ahead of the conference, Saudi King Abdullah also refused to meet al-Maliki during a regional tour by the Iraqi leader, underlining Saudi displeasure with the Iraqi government's closeness to Iran.
On Thursday, Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal stopped short of announcing the forgiveness of Iraq's debt as U.S. and Iraqi officials had hoped. Instead, he told the conference Saudi Arabia was still negotiating with Iraq.
The kingdom, one of Iraq's biggest creditors, is owed between $15 billion and $18 billion. Iraq says its huge Saddam-era debt to various countries -- amounting by some estimates to over $60 billion -- is too big a burden when it is trying to rebuild. But other top creditors -- including Kuwait, Russia and China -- also did not announce immediate debt relief.
In his speech to the conference Friday, al-Faisal called on Iraqis "to rise to the level of their historic and moral responsibility" and enact the political reforms.
Al-Maliki sought to convince his neighbors his government was serious about reform, saying reconciliation "is not some passing political slogan for us, it's a strategic vision."
But he added a warning not to side with Iraq's Sunnis. "We ask our brothers and friends to respect the religious, sectarian and ethnical diversity of the Iraqi people," he said. "We will not allow any component of the Iraqi people to turn to foreign powers against another component."
But al-Maliki faces strong obstacles at home to the reforms. His Shiite allies in parliament have resisted a draft law for ending the program to purge Baathists; they also oppose changing the constitution to accommodate Sunnis.
Friday's declaration also calls on Iraq to disarm Shiite militias -- a provision that brought a rebuke Friday from the movement of radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, a former ally of al-Maliki who leads one of the most feared militias.
"If the government disarms the people, how can the people defend themselves from extremists and Saddamists?" Sheik Abdul Hadi Al-Mohamadawi, a top Sadrist, said Friday in a sermon in the Iraqi city of Kufa.
