Major powers gather in Egypt to help Iraq emerge from violence

The two-day meeting in Sharm el-Sheikh, on the Red Sea, is to bring representatives of the United States, Iraq and Iran together at the same table with those of other major Western powers, Arab countries, China, Russia and the United Nations.

The focus is on bringing stability to Iraq, which has been in the grip of a bloody insurgency since the US-led invasion in 2003.

Baghdad's interim government announced at the weekend that nationwide elections would take place on January 30, despite the continuing conflict between US-led troops and insurgents and reluctance by the United Nations to expose its workers to the violence.

Further impetus to the conference came when the so-called Paris Club of creditor nations agreed on Sunday to cut Iraq's debt to it -- 40 billion dollars (30 billion euros) -- by 80 percent.

The United States pushed the idea of the international meeting months ago as President George W. Bush campaigned for re-election. But it rejected the call from France -- which first suggested the conference last year -- for it to be under the aegis of the United Nations and to include Iraqi opposition figures.

UN chief Kofi Annan, who in September called the Iraq war "illegal", was from late Monday to attend the conference to be chaired by Egypt.

Bush on Sunday welcomed the debt-reduction, and used a media conference in Chile to dismiss criticism about the Iraq war, which was originally justified by the supposed existence of weapons of mass destruction, none of which were ever found.