Washington says it will join international talks with Iran "from now on"

Thursday 9 April 2009

Washington says it will join international talks with Iran "from now on"

The Cable, here

"...Gary Sick, a former NSC Iran hand, told Foreign Policy the announcement was wholly in line with what the Obama people have been saying from the beginning. “Basically, you can talk about [engagement] in the abstract.” Today’s announcement, he said, signals “you know, they are actually going to do this.”

The Obama administration’s “kind of body language and willingness to say openly, ‘This is what we are going to do,’ has been happening for some time,” Sick added. The buzz over today’s news, Sick said, “is more people’s reaction than anything else – they didn’t quite believe it. But here we are.”

“My big question is whether the Obama administration thought about whether to go right into negotiations now before the Iranian elections in June,” Sick continued. “My own sense is in the meantime, there are a number of steps to be taken. They can have preliminary meetings about the shape of the table, who has a copy of the agenda,” etc...

[Washington was represented at the P5+1 meetings in London today by undersecretary Burns. He was accompanied by the NSC senior director on Iran and Persian Gulf issues Puneet Talwar. Sources said they believed that the NSC’s Talwar, who previously worked as a Middle East advisor to then Senate Foreign Relations committee chairman, now vice president Joseph Biden, has influence on the emerging U.S. policy towards Iran. They saw signs the locus of U.S. policy towards Iran was emanating from the White House rather than the State Department."

...and Haaretz:

"....U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Wednesday that the United States would be a "full participant" in talks by major powers with Iran over its nuclear program....Prior to word from State, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran's hard-line president, said that his country welcomes talks with the United States should it prove to be honest in extending its hand toward Iran, one of the strongest signals yet that Tehran welcomes Obama's calls for dialogue. "The Iranian nation welcomes a hand extended to it should it really and truly be based on honesty, justice and respect," Ahmadinejad said ...."