Bush Eases Up on Iran as Envoy Heads to Nuclear Talks
Bloomberg.com
By Viola Gienger and Janine Zacharia
July 18 (Bloomberg) — After years of trading insults with Iran, the Bush administration is trying a gentler approach, a tack that produced results in dealings with two longtime U.S. adversaries, North Korea and Libya.
President George W. Bush is sending a top envoy to multinational talks in Geneva tomorrow that will include Iran, the highest-level discussions between the two countries since Iran’s Islamic revolution in 1979. The administration is also considering stationing diplomats in Tehran for the first time since then.
The presence of the State Department’s third-ranking official, Undersecretary for Political Affairs William Burns, in Geneva is intended to shore up a “two-track policy” to reward Iran for suspending uranium enrichment and impose penalties if it doesn’t, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said yesterday.
“Obviously, the decision to send a U.S. representative is a major step forward, and it’s a gesture of good faith,” said Suzanne Maloney, a former State Department policy adviser. The U.S. has “always said this is a two-track policy, and yet one track has always been more robust than the other.”
The Bush administration hasn’t sent representatives to prior meetings with Iranian officials, saying it won’t negotiate until Iran suspends enrichment.
A combination of talks, incentives and penalties ultimately prompted Libya to renounce terrorism and nuclear weapons, and persuaded North Korea to hand over an inventory of its plutonium program last month.
No Major Expectations
The U.S. doesn’t have major expectations for the Geneva meeting, an administration official said on condition of anonymity.
Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki welcomed the U.S. decision to attend the talks as “positive,” adding that the negotiations leading to tomorrow’s meeting took place in an improved atmosphere.
“In terms of form, this is a step forward,” Mottaki said at a news conference in Ankara today. “I hope that this improvement in form will also be reflected in the content.”
In Geneva, Iranian negotiator Saeed Jalili is to respond to the incentives offered a second time by the U.S. and five other nations.
At the State Department today, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the decision to dispatch Burns signals that the U.S. “will remain very serious about this diplomacy.”
She also said it should “be very clear to everyone” that the U.S. continues to insist on the verifiable suspension of Iran’s enrichment and reprocessing activities as a precondition for beginning formal negotiations with Iran.
Nuclear Energy Offer
The nations are working to persuade Iran to give up uranium enrichment, a process that can lead to power generation or a bomb. Iran, the Middle East’s second-biggest oil producer, says it wants to meet its energy needs and isn’t developing nuclear weapons. The U.S. and its partners offered to help Iran with nuclear energy in exchange for its abandonment of uranium enrichment.
A negative response from Iran might put the U.S. in a stronger position to demand a fourth round of sanctions at the United Nations Security Council, said the administration official who spoke on condition of anonymity. European nations also might be more persuaded to impose further sanctions on their own, the official said.
Oil Prices
A week ago, oil prices shot up after an Iranian missile test and speculation that an Israeli military exercise last month was a prelude to a strike on Iran.
The State Department also is considering opening an interests section that would place diplomats in Tehran for the first time since the 1979 hostage crisis.
The administration official said no decision has been made on whether to proceed with the interests section. The U.K.’s Guardian newspaper reported yesterday, without citing anyone, that the administration will make the announcement in the next month.
Switzerland, which acts as an intermediary for the U.S. in Iran, said it has talked about the possibility with the Bush administration.
U.S. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack wouldn’t comment on administration deliberations on setting up an interests section. Even so, he said, “It is quite apparent from our efforts over the past several years that we have a real interest in reaching out to the Iranian people.”
Iranian Basketball Team
He cited a State Department office set up in Dubai to deal with Iran-related matters in the region, U.S. offers of disaster aid to Iran, and U.S. visits by Iranian artists. The Iranian Olympic basketball team will come to the U.S. to play in the National Basketball Association summer league, McCormack said.
“The request of the United States has been made via the media in a non-official fashion,” Iran’s Mottaki said earlier in Damascus. “The opening of an American interests office is the object of a study and an examination in Iran.”
Burns won’t raise the issue in Geneva, McCormack said. Burns will join Jalili at the meeting with European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana and officials from France, Germany, the U.K., China and Russia.
Burns’s presence is a low-risk venture for Bush, who approved the move, said Edward Walker, a former U.S. ambassador to Israel and Egypt who once served as assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs.
As a career diplomat, Burns “does not commit the political side at the White House,” said Walker, an adjunct scholar with the Middle East Institute in Washington. “Yet he gives encouragement to our partners in the coalition and sends a hint to the Iranians that there may be more if they reciprocate.”
The odds are slim that the Geneva meeting would produce dramatic results, based on comments by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and on Jalili’s previous meetings with Solana, said Maloney, now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington.
“Anything that produces successor meetings would be considered a huge victory,” she said.
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