Iran Pleased with Success at NPT Meeting

TEHRAN (Fars News Agency)- Following Iran's insistence on the necessity of indiscriminative implementation of all contents of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), the first session of the Preparatory Committee for the 2010 NPT Review Conference unanimously approved of Iran's stance, Tehran's envoy to IAEA said.

Iran on Tuesday objected to a clause inserted in the agenda of the meeting, saying that the agenda should deal with other aspects of the NPT as well.

Speaking to FNA on Tuesday, Iran's permanent representative to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Ali Asghar Soltanieh pointed to the political pressures exerted by the US and certain western countries to push Iran into isolation at the meeting, and said, "Owing to the insistence of the Iranian delegation on its primary stance which required full implementation of all the contents of the NPT without any segregation, the conference eventually approved Iran's stance after 10 days of debates and put it on the agenda of talks."

The draft agenda for the meeting primarily focused on the necessity of full compliance with the NPT requirements by the member states, but following Iran's strong objections and its insistence, the participants unanimously approved that the agenda should also deal with the non-compliance of the established nuclear states with article 4 of the NPT, which requires all established nuclear states to help other member states access and use civilian nuclear energy through transferring the technology to the latter group of countries.

As a result of the approval, the Preparatory Committee for the 2010 NPT Review Conference will also study non-compliance of the established nuclear states in its current and future meetings, including those in 2008 and 2009, the envoy said.

The first session of the Preparatory Committee for the 2010 NPT Review Conference was adjourned for five days after two days of operation due to Iran's objections. Iran's protest, which pertained to the insertion of a clause into the agenda which unjustly dealt with full compliance with NPT contents by those countries which strive to access and use nuclear technology received wide debates after a large number of delegations from the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), Syria, Indonesia, Algeria, Malaysia, Venezuela and Cuba officially voiced support for Iran's stance.

Iran and the said delegations protested against the inclusion of only one of the articles of the NPT and ignorance of the rest of the content of the treaty, including dismantlement and disarmament of the nuclear weapon states and implementation of article 4 mentioned above.

At the beginning of the conference, certain countries strove to make hue and cry about Iran's objection and alleged that Iran sought to push the meeting into failure. Media and diplomats of the same countries also strove to convince the world that Iran is worried about a discussion of its nuclear issue at the meeting.

Soltanieh further said that during the last month, the Non-Aligned Movement has prepared several statements on the different articles of the NPT, which will be announced gradually.

The meeting of the Preparatory Committee for the 2010 NPT Review Conference started on April 30 and will continue till May 11.

Why U.S. needs to sit down with Iran

By Trudy Rubin

The Philadelphia Inquirer

He was supposed to sit across from her at the dinner table. Everyone was waiting to see if they would start a conversation.

But Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki left the diplomatic dinner in Sharm el-Sheik, Egypt, before Condoleezza Rice got there. "I'm not given to chasing anyone," said the U.S. secretary of state when asked if she felt stood up.

Thus ended the latest chapter of the ongoing saga of whether Iran and the United States will talk.

This isn't the end of the story. Iran and top Bush officials have openly signaled their interest in dialogue. The European Union's top foreign policy official, Javier Solana - point man for multilateral talks on Iran's nuclear program - says "the United States must engage" directly with Iran. Top Iraqi leaders say the same.

Yet, disputes within the administration still block serious talks. Vice President Dick Cheney and his circle want Iran regime change, not engagement. Rice understands the need for talks, but wants to keep them narrowly focused - on issues like Iranian arms for Iraqi militias.

"They are taking very limited baby steps," says Trita Parsi, president of the National Iranian American Council. Without some broader strategy for U.S.-Iran dialogue, Parsi doesn't think such talks can go anywhere.

I agree. So here's four reasons the White House should start a strategic dialogue with Iran.

First, neither talks nor diplomacy mean capitulation. I get e-mail equating dialogue with Iran to Neville Chamberlain's pact at Munich. Nonsense. Reagan talked to the Kremlin, and Nixon went to China. Talks mean both sides put their interests on the table and discuss them directly. They may or may not reach agreement. Talks don't mean America endorses the nature of Iran's regime, or its human rights violations against students, women or workers.

Iran has rebuffed U.S. efforts in the past for direct contacts, and we have done likewise. But the issues at hand - Iran's nuclear program, its role in the region, and Iraq's future - require us to try again.

Second, if America wants to prevent Iran from getting the capacity for nuclear weapons, the best option is smart, tough diplomacy. Various formulas offer some hope of limiting Iran's program. They can't be fully explored unless we talk directly to Iran, alongside multilateral negotiations.

The alternative - bombing Iran's nuclear energy sites - would strengthen Tehran's hard-liners and Islamists worldwide; it would ensure that Iran pursued a bomb.

Third, Washington's interests in Iraq coincide more with Tehran's than with those of any other Middle Eastern country. Iran's Shiites back the elected Shiite-led Iraqi government; Sunni Arab states in the region yearn for the return to power of Iraq's Sunni minority.

Iran is making trouble for U.S. soldiers in Iraq because the United States has called for regime change in Tehran. We and the Iranians are playing tit-for-tat. We're still holding five Iranians we arrested in Erbil (which may be why Iran's foreign minister snubbed Rice). If the Tehran regime believed Washington no longer sought its ouster, we could work together to stabilize Iraq.

Fourth, despite the flaming rhetoric of Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, there is reason to think the time is ripe for talks. In 2001, Iran provided U.S. forces with crucial cooperation in stabilizing Afghanistan.

In 2003, Iran transmitted a proposal for a "grand bargain" to the State Department. The proposal agreed to consider ending aid to Palestinian opposition groups, and acting to limit Hezbollah to politics. Iran was also willing to discuss accepting the Saudi/Arab League proposal that called for recognition of Israel alongside a Palestinian state. In return, Iran wanted to discuss its desire for "full access to peaceful nuclear technology" and wanted to be dropped from the "axis of evil."

That proposal got short shrift from the Bush team. We will never know whether it had the full backing of Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

In 2003, the United States had a much stronger hand in the Middle East. The ouster of Iran's archenemy, Saddam, and the mess in Iraq, have made Iran far more powerful. No one can be certain a "grand bargain" is possible today.

But there is an open struggle going on inside Iran between pragmatists who want to bargain and hard-line radicals led by Ahmadinejad. "There is a new discourse between those who want normalization (with the West and the United States) and those who want to retain tension and revolutionary fervor," says Hooshang Amirahmadi. He is an Iranian-American professor at Rutgers who played a key role in back-channel discussions that laid the ground for the Iranian proposals of 2003.

In the Iranian system, Ahmadinejad is not the key foreign policy maker - that is Ayatollah Khamenei. This is a moment when America needs to explore Iran's intentions, to see whether Iran is finally ready to play by accepted international rules. That would require the White House to stop dreaming of regime change, and put all issues on the table. It would require a whole new U.S. strategic approach to the region.

The venue for talks - Sharm el-Sheik, whatever - doesn't matter. What matters is the political will.

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ABOUT THE WRITER

Trudy Rubin is a columnist and editorial-board member for the Philadelphia Inquirer. Readers may write to her at: Philadelphia Inquirer, P.O. Box 8263, Philadelphia, Pa. 19101, or by e-mail at trubin@phillynews.com.

Bush won't give up military option on Iran: Rice

Tue May 8, 2007

DUBAI (Reuters) - U.S. President George W. Bush will keep a military option on the table as he seeks a diplomatic solution to the standoff with Iran over its nuclear plans, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said.

"The American president will not abandon the military option and I believe that we do not want him to do so," Rice said in an interview with Al Arabiya television, part of which was broadcast on Tuesday.

Iran is embroiled in a standoff with the West over its nuclear ambitions. The West suspects it is seeking to develop atomic weapons but Tehran says it wants only to generate electricity so that it can export more of its oil and gas.

Rice in remarks dubbed in Arabic said Bush remained "committed to the diplomatic option. If the world remained strong, there would be a chance for the success of the diplomatic option".

Two sets of United Nations sanctions have been imposed on Iran since December and major powers have warned a third, tougher resolution might be needed if Tehran did not halt uranium enrichment.

"I say to the Iranians ... there are two options -- isolation and dialogue," she said.

Analysts say the measures, including arms and financial sanctions, are hurting business and deterring foreign investment in the Islamic state, which despite its oil wealth is struggling with inflation and unemployment.

Iranian officials have repeatedly rejected Western demands to halt work to enrich uranium, which can be used to fuel nuclear power plants or make atom bombs if refined further.

Rice reiterated that Washington would change its policy against Tehran, adopted after anti-U.S. Iranian clerics toppled the U.S.-allied Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi in an Islamic revolution in 1979.

"The international community has made its demands through the United Nations; Iran should stop nuclear enrichment, after that there would be a change in the U.S. policy that has been going on for 27 years and then I can talk to them about any issue."

Washington severed its ties with Tehran in 1980 after students seized the U.S. embassy there and held 52 hostages for 444 days.