WASHINGTON - In yet another apparent
Middle East policy reversal, the administration of
President George W Bush, according to a new
report, ordered US Ambassador to Iraq Zalmay
Khalilzad in March to postpone indefinitely the
talks with Iran on Iraq for which Khalilzad had
previously received White House approval. The
reversal has widened chasm between the US and the
Europeans on how to reach a diplomatic solution
with Iran on the nuclear weapons issue.
Washington Post columnist David Ignatius
reported on Friday that Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice "froze" the talks, telling
Khalilzad "it wasn't the right time to meet".
Supposedly, the talks had been postponed only
until the formation of a new government
in
Baghdad, which was absorbing a great deal of the
ambassador's attention. (This took a major step to
realization at the weekend.)
Rice had told
reporters on a flight to Berlin on March 29-30
that the talks would take place "sooner or later",
suggesting that Khalilzad was "very busy right now
in Iraq". The new report by Ignatius indicates,
however, there was was a high-level political
decision in Washington not to proceed with the
talks at all.
Ignatius also revealed that
Khalilzad had held "several secret meetings with
an Iranian representative around the turn of the
year". Such meetings were presumably to try to
convince Tehran to agree to higher-level talks on
Iraq. Although he cites no source for these
revelations, Ignatius has broken news in the past
based on exclusive access to Khalilzad. The
ambassador has also used the press in the past to
try to overcome resistance to his own policy
initiatives from high-ranking officials in
Washington.
The columnist attributes the
March decision to scuttle the talks with Iran to
Rice's desire for close coordination of Iran
strategy with the three European countries -
Britain, France and Germany - which had been
conducting direct negotiations with Iran. But the
decision had much less to do with multilateral
diplomacy on Iran than with the determination of
Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of
Defense Donald Rumsfeld to avoid anything that
legitimized the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Rice's initial comment Just
before leaving for Sydney, Australia on March 16,
Rice had told reporters that talks with Iran on
Iraq "could be useful". But by the time she had
arrived in Sydney, National Security Adviser
Stephen J Hadley and an unnamed "senior US
official" had already denigrated the idea. Rice
had apparently been informed that such talks were
unacceptable to powerful figures in the
administration. "We will see when and if those
talks [with Iran] take place," she said in Sydney.
The bilateral US-Iranian talks on Iraq
were certainly not cut off to coordinate
multilateral diplomacy on the Iranian nuclear
issue more closely. All those involved in the
negotiations except the US had agreed by March
that Washington needed to have direct negotiations
with Tehran to achieve a settlement of the
conflict over Iran's purported nuclear weapons
program.
On March 8, after a meeting of
the International Atomic Energy Agency's governing
board , Director General Mohamed ElBaradei stated:
"Throughout the spectrum, everybody underscored
the need to look for a comprehensive political
settlement that takes account of all underlying
issues." And he added, "I believe that once we
start to discuss security issues, my personal view
is that the US should be engaged in a dialogue."
The Europeans - particularly France and
Germany - have long been dismayed at Washington's
refusal to enter into diplomatic dialogue with
Iran on the nuclear issue. They viewed the
expected talks with Iran about stabilizing Iraq as
an opportunity open up a channel that could lead
to US-Iran negotiations on nuclear issues as well.
The most aggressive in pressing this point
has been Germany, whose new conservative
chancellor, Angela Merkel, the Bush administration
had expected to follow Washington's lead on Iran.
Instead, the Merkel government has now become the
most aggressive of the European partners in
telling the US that it must agree to direct US
participation in negotiations with Iran.
During a visit to Washington from April 3
to 4, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter
Steinmeier told reporters he had advised Rice and
Hadley that the talks he understood were to occur
between the US and Iran should not be limited to
Iraq but should include the nuclear issue as well.
Steinmeier also said that former British
foreign minister Jack Straw joined him in
supporting direct US-Iranian negotiations. Straw,
who had infuriated hardliners in the US by
referring to an attack on Iran as "inconceivable"
and unjustified, was replaced by Prime Minister
Tony Blair as foreign minister early this month.
In late April, German Minister of Defense Franz
Josef Jung struck the same theme. "This is our
request to Washington: that it begin direct talks
and from there reach results," Jung said.
When Merkel arrived in Washington for a
meeting with Bush on May 3, the White House
expected her to raise the issue directly with
Bush. A senior US official told the Financial
Times that Bush would reaffirm US opposition to
direct negotiations with Iran should she do so.
France has taken the same view of the
problem since at least last July 5, when French
Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy, standing
next to Rice, pledged that the EU-3 would discuss
with Iranians "the security of their country".
Then he added, "And for this, we shall
need the United States - and we shall talk with
them before proposing the package - making the
proposal." But Rice did not comment on his bid for
an active US role in negotiating with Tehran, and
no European proposal involving security was
forthcoming.
The administration's refusal
to meet with Iran is now at the heart of the
protracted discussions between the US and five
other powers on a common position on Iran. The
Europeans, China and Russia have all been
insisting since a meeting in New York in early May
that the US sign on to a package of incentives to
Iran that includes not only nuclear technology but
security guarantees for Iran.
The US
stance, with its implicit rejection of substantive
compromise with Iran and its readiness to use
force on the issue, is also the main reason why
Russia, China and Germany have made it clear they
are opposed any UN resolution that would levy
sanctions against Iran.
Some in the
administration may be open to an eventual shift of
policy. Newsweek reported on May 15 that Under
Secretary of State Nicholas Burns had "indicated
to colleagues that he is mainly waiting for the
right moment, when America's leverage and its
chances of success are maximized".
But
Bush appears to be listening not to the diplomats
but to the same figures who vetoed the direct
talks with Iran in March and have been irrevocably
opposed for more than four years to any dealings
with Tehran.
Gareth Porter is an
historian and national security policy analyst.
His latest book, Perils of Dominance:
Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam,
was published in June 2005.
