By Dean Yates BAGHDAD, Feb 27 (Reuters) - Officials from regional states including Iran and Syria will join U.S. and British envoys at a meeting in Baghdad next month to seek ways to stabilise Iraq, the Iraqi foreign minister said on Tuesday. The mid-March meeting would be a chance for Western and regional powers to try to bridge some of their differences over Iraq, Foreign Minister Hoshiyar Zebari said. "Our hope is that this will be an ice-breaking attempt for maybe holding other meetings in the future. We want Iraq, instead of being a divisive issue, to be a unifying issue," Zebari said by telephone from Denmark where he is on a visit. In December, the bipartisan U.S. Iraq Study Group issued a report on the Iraq war in which it recommended the United States hold direct talks with Damascus and Tehran to persuade them to help stem the violence in Iraq. U.S. President George W. Bush reacted coolly to that proposal. Bush has not ruled out a regional conference to help Iraq, involving Iran and Syria, but the White House has indicated Iraq would have to set it up. Underscoring the chaos in Iraq, car bombs and other blasts in Baghdad killed nine people and wounded 25 despite a new U.S. -backed security offensive in the capital, police said. In the northern city of Mosul, a suicide truck bomber killed six policemen and wounded 25 other people outside a police station. Witnesses said the blast destroyed the station. On Monday, Vice President Adel Abdul-Mahdi suffered minor wounds when a bomb killed seven at the Public Works Ministry. The dead included Ghazi Naji al-Anbari, a deputy minister, who died from his wounds on Monday evening, his son said. Iraq has been planning the March meeting for weeks, but until Tuesday it had been expected to involve only officials from countries bordering Iraq and other Muslim states. The aim is to discuss ways Iraq's neighbours to halt bloodshed that threatens to tear Iraq apart. Zebari said the meeting would involve deputy foreign ministers or senior officials from Iraq's neighbours. TOUGH NEGOTIATIONS Ambassadors from the five permanent members of the United Nations who are based in Baghdad have confirmed they will take part, he said. "Everybody agreed to attend after tough negotiations," Zebari said. A U.S. embassy spokesman could not immediately be reached for comment. A British embassy spokeswoman said the British would attend the meeting but it was unclear at what level. Other participants would come from the United Nations and the Arab League, Zebari said. Asked if U.S. officials could end up having separate meetings with the Iranians and Syrians, Zebari said: "We want to put them all in the one hall first, then explore the other possibilities." Washington accuses Iran of fanning violence in Iraq. In recent weeks, U.S. military officials in Baghdad have presented what they said was evidence that Iranian-manufactured weapons were being smuggled into Iraq. U.S. officials accuse Syria of allowing foreign fighters to cross its long, porous border with Iraq to join those fighting the U.S.-backed government. Both countries deny the accusations. U.S. and Iraqi security forces launched the new crackdown against militants in Baghdad two weeks ago, but car bombs and rocket attacks have persisted. Among attacks in Baghdad on Tuesday, the deadliest was a car bomb in the Karrada commercial district that killed five people. (Additional reporting by Mariam Karouny in Beirut; Aseel Kami, Ahmeed Rasheed, Claudia Parsons, Mussab Al-Khairalla, Ibon Villelabeitia and Waleed Ibrahim in Baghdad)
