Leave your feedback Share Copy URL https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/u-s-syrian-officials-meet-at-iraq-summit Email Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Pinterest Tumblr Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Transcript U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice met with Syrian officials in Egypt Thursday to talk about Syria's role in determining Iraq's future. A Washington Post reporter discusses the first high-level talks between the two countries since 2005. Read the Full Transcript Notice: Transcripts are machine and human generated and lightly edited for accuracy. They may contain errors. JEFFREY BROWN: So, Karen, what did Secretary Rice talk about with her Syrian counterpart, Foreign Minister Walid Moualem? KAREN DEYOUNG, The Washington Post: She said — and he agreed — that they talk exclusively about Iraq. Rice emphasized that the United States would like to see a stop to the so-called foreign fighters flowing from Syria over the border into Iraq. And Minister Moualem from Syria said only that they — in public statements, said only that they had discussed their joint desire for increased security in Iraq. JEFFREY BROWN: Today in Baghdad, you probably heard a top U.S. military spokesman said that Syria had, in fact, tightened its borders and reduced the number of insurgents coming into Iraq. Was that seen as a coincidence or coordinated with this meeting in Egypt today? KAREN DEYOUNG: I don't think it was coordinated. I think it was a coincidence. The U.S. military makes these assessments on a monthly basis. Rice acknowledged after the meeting that they had, indeed, seen these reports, but that they want to wait and see whether it's actually a trend and it's something that continues, because that's a level that goes up and down over various months. JEFFREY BROWN: Now, you said that they focused largely on or maybe exclusively on Iraq. Were there any signs out there that this was the beginning of some broader restart of relations between the U.S. and Syria? Or is it very much focused on Iraq and the subject of this conference, Iraq? KAREN DEYOUNG: Well, I think they — for public consumption, they were saying it's very much — it just focused on Iraq and was made possible in the context of this conference. But I think that U.S. officials do see it as the beginning of a resumption of dialogue, conditional, of course, on progress that they hope to see on the Syrian side.