US, Iran to Hold Rare Talks; Subject Is Iraq

By Ramin Mostaghim and Louise Roug
The Los Angeles Times

Monday 14 May 2007

Washington wants to focus on reining in the insurgency. Tehran agrees to the agenda but may have broader aims.

Tehran - The U.S. and Iran will hold rare meetings within the next few weeks in Baghdad to discuss the insurgency in Iraq, officials from the two nations said Sunday.

The talks, to be conducted between the U.S. ambassador in Baghdad and Iranian officials, would be the highest-level negotiations acknowledged between the two countries in recent years. The announcement suggested a new willingness on the part of the Bush administration to reach out to a longtime foe.

It came on a particularly troubling day in Iraq. More than 50 Iraqis died Sunday in bombings, mortar blasts and gunfire. Two U.S. soldiers also were killed, while 4,000 troops scoured an area southwest of Baghdad in search of three soldiers apparently captured after an ambush Saturday that left four U.S. soldiers and an Iraqi interpreter dead.

"The purpose is to try to make sure that the Iranians play a productive role in Iraq," said Gordon Johndroe, a National Security Council spokesman. "This is not about the United States and Iran. This is about Iraq."

In Tehran, where the news of the talks first broke, Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammed Ali Hosseini confirmed that Iran "has agreed to negotiate."

Although officials from both countries emphasized that there would be no subjects other than Iraq on the table, the talks could help thaw the icy relationship between the nations, observers and officials said.

"One meeting will not bring miracles, but it is a very encouraging and important development," said Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, a Kurd and a longtime proponent of talks between Washington and Tehran.

The Bush administration has long kept the Islamic regime in Tehran at arm's length, accusing it of supporting international terrorism, seeking to develop nuclear weapons and backing insurgents in Iraq. But the Iranian government is believed to have influence both with Iraq's Shiite-dominated government and with Shiite militias, and the Bush administration is under increasing pressure from even its Republican allies in Congress to show progress in Iraq.

"It now seems like the U.S. wants an endgame in Iraq, and there is no endgame without involving Iran," said Vali Nasr, senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and an expert on Iran.

In the past, administration officials said there could be meetings between the two nations only if Tehran suspended its efforts to enrich uranium. Iranian officials say the program is designed to produce nuclear energy, but the West fears it will lead to the development of nuclear weapons.

There were no signs that U.S. or Iranian officials were willing to compromise on the nuclear standoff, Anthony Cordesman, a Middle East expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said Sunday. But he said the meeting in Baghdad might ease tensions.

The two governments broke off diplomatic relations in 1980, after Iranian militants laid siege to the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and took 52 Americans hostage.

The meeting could reduce "the kinds of risks of misunderstandings and false perceptions and lays the groundwork for allowing things to move forward in the future," Cordesman said.

In Tehran, however, analysts said that limits on the agenda could still be an issue of contention.

"The U.S. wants to talk about Iraq only, but Iran wants to have comprehensive talks on all issues," said Saeed Leylaz, an analyst in Tehran. "For Iran, security in Iraq is not the top priority. The top priority for Iran is [Iran's] own security."

U.S. and Iraqi officials said U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker would probably meet with Iranian officials within the next two weeks.

According to Iranian officials, the Bush administration requested the talks through the Swiss Embassy in Tehran.

But Zebari, the Iraqi foreign minister, said groundwork was laid during a meeting among Crocker; David Satterfield, the State Department's coordinator for Iraq; and Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi at a diplomatic summit on Iraq held this month at the Egyptian resort city of Sharm el Sheik.

"That's where the understanding came about," Zebari said. "Some serious work was going on."

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki briefly exchanged pleasantries during the summit, but a much-anticipated meeting between the two during dinner was thwarted when Mottaki walked out early, allegedly disturbed by a female violinist's dress that the Islamist found too revealing.

Thought their governments have had no official diplomatic relationship for 27 years, U.S. and Iranian representatives have quietly met on occasion during the last few years, sometimes under the auspices of the United Nations.

After the Sept. 11 attacks, Iranian and American officials held extensive talks to coordinate their efforts against the Taliban in Afghanistan, which both nations opposed. But rather than pursue this as a road to further talks, President Bush named Iran as part of the "axis of evil" in his 2002 State of the Union speech.

In March of this year, delegates from both countries attended multinational talks in Baghdad about Iraq. U.S. representatives, led by then-Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, shared a table with Iranian officials. However, delegates from the two countries did not hold private talks. At a news conference afterward, Araghchi said the U.S. military occupation of Iraq was fueling violence in the country.

On Sunday, Johndroe of the National Security Council said the new diplomatic overtures were meant to protect U.S. forces in Iraq.

"The president authorized this channel because we must take every step possible to stabilize Iraq and reduce the risk to our troops even as our military continue to act against hostile Iranian-backed activity in Iraq," he said.

But an independent analyst in Tehran noted that U.S. officials were agreeing to meet their Iranian counterparts at the same time they were accusing Iran of supporting Shiite militias in Iraq with explosives and weapons.

"This is not a good atmosphere for the negotiations," warned the analyst, Nader Karimi-Jooni, who added he had little faith that talks would be substantive.

Observers in Tehran and Washington believe there are deep splits within both governments about any detente in the relationship, with hard-liners arguing against it. In addition to Iran's nuclear program, the two nations are at odds about Iran's role in Lebanon and Iraq.

On Friday, Vice President Dick Cheney issued a warning aimed at Tehran as he stood on the deck of the U.S. aircraft carrier John C. Stennis in the Persian Gulf. "We'll keep the sea lanes open," he said. "We'll stand with others to prevent Iran from gaining nuclear weapons and dominating the region."

Iranian Defense Minister Mostafa Mohammed Najjar retorted that his nation's response "to any military invasion would be so crushing, suppressive, decisive and surprising that the demoralized, disoriented and discouraged U.S. soldiers would not be able to stand it," the semiofficial Fars news agency reported.

Despite such deep strains, one critic of Bush's handling of the war in Iraq said Sunday that the coming talks were a positive sign.

"I was heartened to see that the United States and Iran are finally, evidently, going to sit down and talk," said Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) on CBS' "Face the Nation."

"There will be no peace in Iraq or anywhere else until the regional dynamic of this is framed up in a regional understanding, and Iran has to be part of that."