WASHINGTON - Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Monday that Iran has scaled back much of its most troubling interference in Iraq.
"I don't think it's goodwill," Rice said in a wide-ranging farewell interview with Associated Press reporters and editors at the State Department, crediting U.S. and international pressure for the change.
She said that the Iranian regime is finding it harder to operate inside Iraq "because we've been very aggressive against their agents."
A turning point, she said, was last spring's rout of Iranian-backed forces in the southern city of Basra. "They flat-out lost," she said.
More recently, the United States and Iraq signed a security pact that was strongly opposed by Iran. "They did everything they could to stop the strategic forces arrangement -- they couldn't do it," she said of the Iranians.
Speaking before she left Washington for two days of business at the United Nations, Rice said the United States wants the Security Council to enshrine Bush's Israeli-Palestinian peace initiative as the best chance to end the conflict. The talks, begun at Annapolis, Md., last year, should not be dropped by the incoming Obama administration for failure to meet a stated goal of a peace framework on Bush's watch, she said.
"The Security Council will make clear that that is the basis" for continuing peace efforts, she said.
On other topics, Rice:
