Iran takes off on a goodwill mission
By Kaveh L Afrasiabi
Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad is in Malaysia this week to attend the 6th
summit of the Group of Eight Islamic developing countries (D-8), hoping to
deepen Iran's own version of multilateral diplomacy. This follows a recent
Iranian package of proposals that pledges Tehran's constructive role in dealing
with international issues and which also aims to convince the Group of Eight
(G-8) nations, meeting in Tokyo simultaneously, to "look at Iran through a
different lens", to paraphrase Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki.
Although not exactly a counterweight to the G-8, the D-8 is nonetheless
important as a rising voice in global economic affairs, by representing nearly
15% of the world's population and including two important Organization of
Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) members, that is, Iran and Nigeria. The
D-8 was founded
in 1997 and the other participants are Egypt, Pakistan, Turkey, Indonesia,
Malaysia and Bangladesh.
With both the D-8 and G-8 summits addressing such common problems as soaring
oil and food prices, and the latter reportedly set to discuss Iran's nuclear
issue on Tuesday, in light of Iran's formal response to the "Iran Six"
declaring Iran's readiness to engage in earnest negotiations, it is vitally
important for Iran at this critical hour to have solid international support
and to bolster its image as a partner in managing global problems.
On Friday, Iran expressed the hope that the "Iran Six" - the United States,
China, Russia, Britain, France and Germany - would prepare the grounds for
reaching a comprehensive agreement with a "constructive outlook" based on the
common points of the two packages of proposals exchanged between Iran and the
"Iran Six" during the last few months over Tehran's nuclear program.
This year's D-8 summit is titled "Innovative Cooperation" and Iran's proposal
for an agricultural working group has already been approved and this in turn
may translate into greater Iranian external contributions, both to poor
countries in direct aid, as well as to such international agencies as the
International Fund For Agricultural Development, following the footsteps of
Saudi Arabia.
Already, Iran has offered financial and technical support for agricultural
development in Sudan and the scope of such efforts on Iran's part will likely
increase. On a related note, with Iran contributing only one personnel to the
United Nations' peacekeeping efforts, far behind other D-8 nations, according
to recent UN statistics, Iran may be poised to take some initiatives on this
front.
An important question at the D-8 summit is whether or not the loosely
structured organization can shake its 10-year dormancy and begin to implement
some of the agreements that its members have reached at prior summits. These
include preferential trade accords, customs unions and facilitation of visa
requests for D-8 businessmen.
There are still major hurdles to resolve on the first two issues, which hamper
the group's lofty objective of enhancing inter-regional trade by a significant
margin, given the "rule of origin" dispute that promises to remain unresolved
for the foreseeable future.
The D-8's other initiative, in the area of cooperation in civil aviation, is
particularly important to Iran because of the sanctions and the willingness of
"Iran Six" to use this as a bargaining chip with Iran, conditioning it on
Iran's satisfaction of their nuclear demands, such as stopping
uranium-enrichment activities.
With respect to high energy prices, which are hitting the non-OPEC members of
the D-8 hard, such as Egypt, which has met popular dissatisfaction over its
policy to raise energy prices, it will take more than coordination with OPEC's
Fund For International Development to close the gap between the oil and non-oil
members of the D-8.
Rather, a certain give and take, such as offers of oil aid, on Iran's part may
be necessary, to receive the kind of solid support on nuclear and regional
security issues that heavyweights such as Egypt can potentially offer.
Equally important for the D-8 is to coordinate policy with OPEC's leading
member, Saudi Arabia, which is also a leading member of the Organization of
Islamic Conference (OIC) and yet has refused to join this organization and,
what is more, has been at odds with Indonesia over airline safety.
Conceptually, the D-8 represents a sub-group within the OIC that can become a
fount of economic initiative not only for the OIC but also for the Non-Aligned
Movement (NAM). Both OIC and NAM are in dire need of an intellectual uplift and
the D-8 has the advantage of acting as a timely connecting bridge as well as an
engine for "innovative" ideas.
There is a tendency in Iran, however, to focus solely on benefits and to ignore
the attending financial and other costs, but that approach simply does not wash
and Iran must now divert some of its oil windfalls toward inter-regional
cooperation.
The trouble with this strategy is that the Iranian government faces major
economic issues at home, given the twin ills of high inflation and high
unemployment, and Ahmadinejad has promised to introduce far-reaching economic
reforms in the near future in collaboration with the Iranian parliament
(Majlis), which has just announced a new special commission on economic reform.
But internal economic reforms and external economic policies, such as those
covered by the D-8 summit, go hand-in-hand and, yet, the Iranian government
often treats them as discrete issues. A case in point is that the D-8
initiative on preferential trade must conform with Iran's trade policy, such as
its import-export restrictions and high tariffs for certain agricultural
commodities.
The latter do not quite conform with World Trade Organization (WTO) standards
and represent yet another hurdle in Iran's path to WTO accession. This could be
smoothed over by a successful negotiation with the "Iran Six", in light of the
latter's incentive package that promises supporting Iran's WTO bid in the event
of Iran's cooperation on the nuclear issue.
The "Iran Six" foreign ministers in their letters accompanying the incentive
package to Iran have specifically stated that negotiations can commence as soon
as Iran complies with the demand to halt uranium-enrichment activities.
However, as pointed out by some Tehran pundits, there is hardly anything else
to negotiate if Iran agrees to this precondition and the various issues -
duration, nature and scope of suspension, need to be discussed in direct
negotiations.
Iran's approach has apparently struck a positive cord with the European Union
and the EU foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, has hinted through his
spokesperson that he is inclined to commence negotiations with Iran's top
nuclear negotiator, Saeed Jalili, in the near future.
In Tehran, although the government' s spokesman, Gholamhossein Elham, has
reiterated the lack of any change in Iran's nuclear policy, the momentum for a
new flexible and constructive approach has been building up and may soon
culminate in the much talked about "suspension-for-suspension" scenario,
whereby Iran would place its centrifuges in "stand-by" mode, that is, operating
them without actually enriching through the gaseous infusion, and in exchange
there would be halt to international sanctions on Iran. (See
A third option on Tehran Asia Times Online, June 22, 2006.)
Given such significant likely developments, US-Iran diplomacy may also benefit,
seeing how President George W Bush has also emphasized the importance of
"multilateral diplomacy" toward Iran and, equally important, how other pressing
global issues as well as Iran's timely response to "Iran Six" initiative on the
eve of the G-8 summit has for all practical purposes shelved the "Iran war
diplomacy" by Washington.
The US is, after all, a participant in "Iran Six" and that means the White
House has the option of becoming an integral part of the coming Iran-EU
dialogue. This week's summits in Tokyo and Malaysia represent a unique
opportunity to push forward the lofty objective of multilateral diplomacy and
much depends on smart diplomacy by the participants in both summits.
Kaveh L Afrasiabi, PhD, is the author of After Khomeini: New
Directions in Iran's Foreign Policy (Westview Press) and co-author of
"Negotiating Iran's Nuclear Populism", Brown Journal of World Affairs, Volume
XII, Issue 2, Summer 2005, with Mustafa Kibaroglu. He also wrote "Keeping
Iran's nuclear potential latent", Harvard International Review, and is author
of
Iran's Nuclear Program: Debating Facts Versus Fiction.
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