BAGHDAD, Iraq – Iraq’s neighbors, including Iran and Syria, have agreed to join U.S. and British representatives to discuss the Iraqi security crisis at a regional conference March 10 in Baghdad, the government said Wednesday.

Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said he will be issuing formal invitations shortly to the neighboring countries and the five permanent U.N. Security Council members – the U.S., Britain, France, Russia and China – to send deputy foreign ministers or senior officials to the meeting.

Zebari, in a telephone interview with The Associated Press from Sweden, said Iran has agreed to participate in the meeting with the other neighbors but “they have some questions” about a meeting that would be held the same day with the five permanent council members. His words seemed to indicate that Iran was at least partly unhappy with the arrangements for the meeting, and weighing the extent of its own participation.

Iran has had little public comment on the meeting so far. But in the past, Iranian leaders have been vocal in accusing the United States of trying to use the U.N. as a way to “gang up” on it, and the presence of the key Security Council countries at the Iraq meeting might give Iran pause.

For their part, Sunni Arab countries like Egypt still hold grave concerns about the direction taken by Iraq’s Shiite-led government, raising concerns that the conference will make little headway on key issues like security.

Iraq’s relations with its Arab neighbors have been rocky because of fears that the Shiite-led government is falling under Iran’s influence. Originally, the Iraqi government had been reluctant to endorse the regional conference, fearing pressure from Sunni-dominated regimes, but it dropped those objections last year so long as the gathering was held on Iraqi soil.

Two Arab diplomats in Cairo said Wednesday that the U.S. recently increased pressure on some Arab governments to press them to attend the meeting after they initially had turned down invitations from the Iraqi government.

The March meeting got a big boost Tuesday when Washington said it would attend, leading to the possibility it could discuss Iraq’s security with adversaries Syria and Iran.