Commenting on a March 10 international conference in Baghdad, Mikhail Kamynin said: "Moscow considers the Baghdad meeting as a useful step on the way to developing interaction between all international community members interested in stabilizing the situation in Iraq. Russia has always spoken for the necessity to closely coordinate international efforts in the settlement of the Iraqi situation."
Kamynin said the Iraqis themselves must play the decisive role to ensure the quickest normalization, adding that it should be a true intra-Iraqi dialogue aimed at reaching national accord and reconciliation.
The international conference on Iraq opened in Baghdad Saturday despite a mortar shell explosion in the area earlier in the day.
The Iraqi government initiated the meeting in an effort to stop armed clashes and confessional war in the country, which threatens to spill over into neighboring nations.
The meeting in Baghdad for the first time gathered representatives of the outside forces involved in the Iraqi standoff - the United States and Britain on one side of the table, and Syria and Iran on the other.
The Iraqi government also invited five permanent members of the UN Security Council, including Russia, and neighbor countries and interested regional organizations to the conference.
Originally, the meeting was planned as a foreign ministerial event, but it was later decided to hold the conference at a lower level for security reasons, a decision that proved to be a wise one after a mortar shell exploded in the area before the conference opened.
