US: The co-chairman of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group has welcomed as a positive step the Bush administration's decision to embrace one of the panel's key recommendations by engaging in direct talks with Iran and Syria.
Iraqi officials confirmed yesterday that Tehran and Damascus have agreed to send representatives to a meeting on Iraq's future in Baghdad in two week's time. US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice said this week that the US would send an official to the meeting and that she would attend a ministerial conference next month that would also include Iran and Syria.
Former congressman Lee Hamilton, who chaired the Iraq Study Group with former secretary of state James Baker, called the decision "a positive and a constructive" first step toward opening communications with Iran.
The administration said it had waited until Nouri al-Maliki's government agreed a new oil law before agreeing to take part in the meeting, which will include Iraq's neighbours, the five permanent members of the UN security council, Germany and Canada. It will be the first direct diplomatic contact between the US and Iran since 2004, when former secretary of state Colin Powell and his Iranian counterpart met at a conference in Egypt to discuss Iraq's future.
Washington's decision comes after weeks of tough talk by the Bush administration about Iran's nuclear ambitions and Tehran's alleged role in helping Shia militias in Iraq. The UN security council is considering fresh sanctions against Iran in response to the Iranians' failure to meet a deadline last week for suspending its nuclear programme.
The last month has also seen a US naval build-up in the Persian Gulf and the arrest by US forces of Iranians alleged to be operating with insurgents inside Iraq.
Philip Zelikow, who until December was one of Dr Rice's top aides, suggested that Washington delayed its diplomatic engagement with Tehran until financial sanctions and the military build-up had put the US into a stronger negotiating position.
"We became convinced that the Iranians were not taking us seriously. So we've done some things to get them to take us seriously, so now we can try diplomacy," he told the New York Times.
Senate majority leader Harry Reid said the move was a step in the right direction, but he called for more diplomatic action by the US.
"Our national security requires a robust diplomatic effort in the Middle East, and the Bush administration cannot again settle for mere half measures," he said.
The administration has said that the talks in Baghdad would focus exclusively on Iraq but officials have not ruled out bilateral talks with Iran on other issues.
Vice-president Dick Cheney repeated this week, however, that "all options are on the table" in dealing with the prospect of Iran developing a nuclear weapons capability.
The administration has not denied a report that a new panel inside the Pentagon is drawing up plans to bomb Iran that could be activated within 24 hours.
Frank Millar adds: Downing Street has welcomed talks involving Iran and Syria as part of a "contact group" of Iraq's neighbours, while stressing this is "not new", and emphasising the need for "results on the ground". The proposed talks have been presented in some quarters as marking a shift in US policy.
However prime minister Tony Blair's official spokesman said yesterday: "The Americans have always said they would take part in the contact group, so that is not new. In terms of Iran and Syria, the issue is not contact, the issue is what their response is and whether they engage properly and whether we see a constructive attitude." The spokesman continued: "Meeting is good, but results have to flow from meetings. We welcome contact, but equally what we want to see is hard, concrete results - that's on the ground in Iraq, on the ground in Lebanon, and on the ground in terms of influence used in Palestine as well. Those are the results we are looking for."