KUWAIT CITY — The United States and Iran, the two nations with the most at stake in Iraq, pointedly ignored each other Tuesday as Iraq's premier unsuccessfully pleaded for immediate financial and diplomatic backing from rich Arab neighbors still leery of Tehran's influence on Baghdad.

A sharp exchange between Saudi and Iranian diplomats underscored the mistrust that has hampered Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's mission to win those specific commitments.

Rice and Iranian Foreign Minister Manoucher Mottaki said only a brief hello and did not shake hands as Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said he cannot understand why Arab states have not forgiven Iraq's crushing debts, made new loans or sent ambassadors to Baghdad.

"We find it difficult to explain why diplomatic exchange (between Iraq and its Middle Eastern neighbors) has not taken place," al-Maliki told foreign ministers from nearby nations. "Many foreign countries have kept their diplomatic missions in Baghdad and did not make security excuses."

Rice sat diagonally across a large U-shaped table from Mottaki as al-Maliki spoke at the opening of a meeting of Iraq's neighbors held in Kuwait — the third such meeting in the past year.

A copy of the conference's draft resolution obtained by The Associated Press calls for increased help from Iraq's neighbors in fighting militias and "assistance in solving the issue of Iraqi debts." But Iraq's neighbors have made similar pledges at two previous meetings, with little follow-through. They have also promised to open diplomatic missions in Baghdad, but none has yet done so.

The Bush administration blames both Iran and Syria for feeding the insurgency inside Iraq, but considers Iran the far greater problem.

"We would hope that all of Iraq's neighbors would choose to be positive neighbors. I don't think it's any secret that we do not believe that to be the case with all of Iraq's neighbors," Rice said. "The good thing about meetings like this is that it periodically calls people to account."