Iraq's premier said Monday he will not let country become a proxy battleground for Syria's differences with the United States, as Tehran called for a three-way summit with the Syrian and Iraqi presidents.
Amid the stepped up diplomacy, more than 100 deaths were reported since Sunday morning and gunmen attacked the convoy of a second Iraqi deputy health minister.
Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's comments to Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moallem came as the US military claimed that as many as 100 foreign fighters cross into Iraq from Syria every month.
"If Syria or any other state has differences with the United States, it's their own business," Maliki said.
"It should settle these differences, but not at our cost," the premier told a joint news conference with Moallem, the first Syrian official to visit Iraq since the US-led invasion of 2003.
But Moallem insisted that he was not in Iraq to "please the United States."
"I am nobody's godfather and not a mediator for the United States," he told a joint news conference after talks with powerful Iraqi Shiite Islamist leader Abdel-Aziz al-Hakim.
"In this current situation there is no dialogue between Syria and the United States," he said.
Maliki said Iraq aimed to improve its relationship with Syria, but that "this requires a strong desire from both the brother countries."
"What goes on in Iraq is a threat for everybody," he said. "The interest of Syria is to contribute in the stability of Iraq."
Maliki told Moallem that many of the terrorist attacks in Iraq are being planned in neighboring countries and that this must stop.
Moallem denied Syria wanted to see instability grip its eastern neighbor.
"Danger to Iraq is danger for the entire region," he argued.
A government spokesman said that diplomatic relations between Syria and Iraq will be restored this week during Moallem's visit.
There has been increased talk of diplomatic efforts to involve Syria and Iran in helping to end the violence Iraq.
An official in Iraqi President Jalal Talabani's office said he had accepted an invitation from Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to visit Tehran this weekend.
An MP for the main Shiite bloc, Bassem Sharif, said that there was a possibility that President Bashar Assad might join the talks.
"There is some expectation that the Syrian president may be present," he said. "There is a real desire to have such a three-way summit and there could be a surprise."
But a Syrian official said "there are no plans for such a [tripartite] summit."
In Washington, US State Department spokesman Tom Casey voiced skepticism that any meeting between Iran, Syria and Iraq could help to reduce the violence and said similar meetings in the past had not resulted in that happening.
"In those contacts, we have seen public statements from the Iranian government, expressing their desire to reduce the violence and to respond positively to the situation in Iraq," Casey told reporters in Washington.
"As I've said, unfortunately, those positive statements - and this applies to the case of Syria as well - have not been backed up by actual, concrete steps," he added.
Concerning Damascus, Casey said, Washington is still waiting for action to stop foreign fighters from entering Iraq from Syria.
In Baghdad, coalition spokesman Major General William Caldwell said Monday that up to 100 foreign fighters cross into Iraq from Syria every month.
"We don't know how much they [the Syrians] are assisting this effort, but we don't know how much they are trying to preclude it either," Caldwell told reporters in Baghdad.
"We still see foreign fighters coming, between 70 and 100 a month coming across the Syrian border into Iraq," he said, figures in line with those of the past year.
He said US and Iraqi soldiers had killed 425 foreign fighters so far this year and captured 670. Twenty percent of them were Syrian, a similar percentage Egyptian, and most of the rest from Sudan and Saudi Arabia.
The past week has seen bitter sectarian tensions come to a head inside Iraq's national unity government.
At a news conference uniting ministers who have been openly at odds over the fate of dozens of civil servants kidnapped last week, Defense Minister Abdel-Qader Jassem said the security forces were hunting the kidnappers: "We are in a state of war and in war all measures are permissible."
Maliki, who is preparing a Cabinet reshuffle, warned political leaders they had to abandon sectarian, partisan interests and pull together.
"We cannot be politicians by day and with the militias or terrorists ... by night," he told generals, whose own loyalties are in question.
Deputy Health Minister Hakim al-Zamily said gunmen attacked his convoy and killed two guards near a Sunni rebel stronghold. Zamily was the second ministry deputy targeted in two days. Ammar al-Saffar, a member of Maliki's Daawa party, was kidnapped from his home by gunmen in uniform.
In all, 21 Iraqis were killed Monday in a series of attacks in Baghdad, Ramadi, Baqouba and near the Syrian border, and the bodies of 26 Iraqis who had been tortured were found on the streets of several cities across the country, police said.
US military data showed less violence in Baghdad in the past four weeks than at any time since the government was formed but it spiked last week, Caldwell said. - Agencies
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The handover of security control of the Shiite province of Diwaniyah from the US military to Iraqi forces has been cancelled, a local government official told AFP on Monday. Sheikh Ghanim Abid Dahash, spokesman for Diwanyiah provincial council, said the transfer has been postponed 'indefinitely because there is no coordination between the central government and the US forces.'
One of Iraqs most powerful Shiite political parties dropped the word revolution from its name on Saturday in an apparent attempt to keep its distance from Iran. The Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) will henceforth be known as the Supreme Islamic Council of Iraq. Party leader Abdel Aziz al-Hakim, a top Shiite cleric, announced the name change at a news conference called to confirm his re-election at the head of the party, which is part of Iraqs ruling coalition.