General Petraeus meets with the press corps while the President is in Kuwait.

Q Obviously, part of President Bush’s trip is related to the Iran issue, and I’m wondering if you’re able to talk a little bit about the Iran factor inside Iraq, and what the latest is you’re seeing in terms of weapons or anyone from Iran in Iraq — GENERAL PETRAEUS: What we’re seeing is what might be characterized as mixed signs or mixed indicators. As I have mentioned to some of you, in recent weeks, even recent months, we saw a reduction in certain types of attacks associated with what we call the signature weapons that are provided by Iran, have historically been provided by Iran to the Quds Force, supported special groups, in particular, and other militia extremist elements. So we saw a reduction in the very large caliper rocket attacks, RPG-29s, a certain use of MANPAD — manned portable air defense system — and EFPs. However, in this year, EFP use has gone up actually, over about the last 10 days, by a factor of two or three. And, frankly, we’re trying to determine why that might be. Beyond that, of course, Iran’s senior-most leaders promised Iraq’s senior-most leaders that they would stop the funding, arming, training and directing of militia extremists and other elements in Iraq that were creating security challenges. And we are waiting, frankly, to see that carried out — made operationalized by all of the different elements of Iran, because there clearly has been training that has continued until recently. We have detained some individuals that have — that were members of the special groups and were trained in Iran fairly recently. And so, again, we’re trying to determine from all of these different indicators what is — in fact, is there a coherent policy shift, if you will — and that is hard to determine right now — or what else is going on. And, of course, the Ambassador’s team, and actually, an MNFI rep will meet with them we think here in a bit, and I’ll let the Ambassador talk a bit about the possible upcoming talks.