IRAQ - Sept 9 - Iraq Tells Neighbours Violence Could Spill Over Borders.

FM Hoshyar Zebari urge Iraq's neighbours to prevent "terrorists and killers" from crossing into his country and warned that the violence in Iraq could spill across its borders into other countries. Zebari's comments came during the opening of a daylong conference that brought to Baghdad officials from all of Iraq's neighbours and other Middle East countries, as well as representatives from the UN and the Group of 8 industrialised nations. It picked up from the first such conference in March, which saw the first direct US-Iranian talks since the war began, focusing on border problems, Iraqi refugees and energy issues, including oil supplies. "Despite our emphasis on national reconciliation at home we also need to reconcile with our neighbourhood, with the international community at large", Zebari told the group. Zebari called this a "critical period for us" and said "we need your support and your commitment, especially for our immediate neighbours". Elsewhere, the US command said a marine had died in Anbar Province in a noncombat-related incident. The marine, with the Multinational Force-West, died Sept 7 in an incident that is currently under investigation, the military said. In northern Iraq, US forces killed one of the insurgents suspected to be behind the quadruple suicide bombings in August against communities of Yazidis, a Kurdish-speaking religious minority, that killed 520 people, said Rear Admiral Mark Fox, a US military spokesman. Abu Muhammad al-Afri, a regional leader of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia who is also known by several pseudonyms, was killed Sept. 3 in an airstrike southwest of Mosul, Fox said. The appeal by Zebari to Iraq's neighbours occurred on the eve of the start of congressional hearings in Washington by Ryan Crocker, the US ambassador to Iraq, and General David Petraeus, the top commander, who are to deliver crucial reports on Iraq's progress amid a debate over calls to start bringing home American troops. An Iraqi government spokesman, Ali al-Dabbagh, said that there had been "progress on the security side, particularly in Baghdad", but said that support from the US was still needed and that there should be no timetable set for it to end. "When things get better and the security situation gets better, the Iraqi government will be able to talk about a timetable", he said at a news conference. US officials have also said that security has been improving but that they are not seeing significant progress politically with the government of PM Nuri Kamal al-Maliki. But Maliki disputed that assessment at the meeting, saying the "Iraqi national unity government has achieved great victories in different fields as it works seriously to improve the economic situation, and has achieved major results despite the major economic destruction that we inherited from the former regime". Security was extraordinarily tight in central Baghdad where the meeting was taking place at the Foreign Ministry complex with security forces blocking two main bridges linking the city's eastern and western sectors to all but official traffic. Parliament canceled its session Sunday for lack of a quorum because many legislators could not make it due to the closed roads, said Wissam al-Zubaidi, an adviser to the deputy speaker of Parliament, Khaled al-Attiyah. The Iranian and Syrian deputy FMs headed their countries' delegations while other regional countries were represented by their ambassadors, Zebari said before the meeting. In addition to neighbours of Iraq - Turkey, Saudia Arabia, Kuwait and Jordan - delegations from Egypt and Bahrain were present. With Crocker in Washington, the US was represented by the deputy chief of mission in Iraq, Patricia Butenis. Zebari said they needed to talk about helping the Iraqi government bring security and stability to Iraq internally, but added that the country's neighbours needed to "actively work on controlling the borders and prevent terrorists and killers from infiltrating across into Iraq". "Terrorism should be fought", Zebari said, "because the fires that they are igniting in the land of the two rivers will spread outside the borders and endanger neighbouring countries". The land of the two rivers is a reference to Iraq.