Jul 17, 2008 4:00 pm US/Eastern
Report: U.S. To Post Diplomats In Iran
(CBS News)
The Bush administration is
changing course on Iran
in its final months. The hope is that engagement can jolt a stagnant
effort to resolve concerns about Tehran's disputed nuclear program
where war drums could not.
According to
the report,
diplomats will establish a U.S. interests section, which is a step shy
of establishing a full embassy. The U.S. has an interest section in
Cuba.
The U.S. has shifted from its long-standing confrontational policy
of isolating Iran in favor of a diplomatic approach that resembles the
direction taken to get North Korea to give up its atomic arms.
The administration will, for the first time, send a senior envoy to
talks with Iran's chief nuclear negotiator. Until the weekend meeting
in Switzerland, the U.S. has insisted it would not speak with the
Iranians until they end the suspect activities.
In addition, the administration is floating a proposal to open a de
facto U.S. Embassy in Tehran. U.S. diplomats would go to Iran for the
first time in nearly 30 years since the countries broke relations after
the 1979 Islamic revolution.
Neither move guarantees results. There are still hawks who oppose
the tactical switch, still underpinned by broad penalties against Iran
and President Bush's refusal to rule out any option, including force,
to keep Iran from developing the bomb.
But officials who have championed these separate but parallel
drives say new, creative ideas must be tried if the threat posed by
Iran is to be contained or eliminated by the end of Bush's second term
in January.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and her new third-in-command at
the State Department, William Burns, have been among the most vocal
proponents of the new direction, officials say. Burns will represent
the U.S. at Saturday's meeting with Iranian negotiator Saeed Jalili in
Geneva.
Burns will then meet with Rice on Monday in Abu Dhabi where they
will brief senior Arab officials wary of Iran's intentions on the
latest developments.
However, on the eve of the crucial negotiations about its nuclear
program, Iran has succeeded in speeding up production of enriched
uranium, reports
CBS News national security correspondent David Martin.
According to U.S. intelligence officials, the enrichment is well
short of bomb grade uranium, but it shows the Iranians are mastering
the tricky processs.
Rice said Thursday the administration's decision to send Burns to
the talks proves that the United States is committed to diplomacy and
shows that the world is united in trying to deal with Iran's nuclear
program. That program, along with recent military muscle flexing in the
Persian Gulf, has spiked tensions and spooked oil markets.
"The point that we're making is the United States is firmly behind
this diplomacy, firmly behind and unified with our allies and hopefully
the Iranians will take that message," she told reporters. "It's going
to be very clear to them" that the group of five permanent members of
the U.N. Security Council - Britain, China, France, Russia and the
United States - and Germany, and other countries are united.
The six-nation group has offered Iran incentives to halt activities
that could lead the development of nuclear weapons. If Iran declines
the offer, as it has done with previous ones, it will face new
penalties.
Under the European proposal, Iran would freeze construction of
additional centrifuges, the machines which enrich uranium, without
pledging to freeze enrichment itself, reports
Martin.
In return, the U.S. and its allies would freeze any additional
economic sanctions against Iran. The so-called freeze-freeze agreement
would remain in effect while the two sides negotiated the fate of
Iran's nuclear program.
Officials say Burns will be listening, not negotiating, at the
meeting that they insist is a "one-time event." But his mere presence
signals a significant change in Bush's approach toward Iran, a charter
member of what he termed the "axis of evil" in 2002.
Bush has chosen different routes in dealing with the other two
members of that group: The U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003 and embarked on
tortuous negotiations to rid North Korea of nuclear weapons. The latter
effort will come into sharper focus next week when Rice meets senior
Asian officials, possibly including the North Korean foreign minister,
in Singapore after her stop in Abu Dhabi.
The White House insists it will not negotiate with Iran as it has
with North Korea until Tehran halts enriching and reprocessing uranium.
But it is supporting an effort led by European Union foreign policy
chief Javier Solana that would allow early talks with others in the
six-nation group before such a step.
Iran has rebuffed the attempt to persuade it to stop enrichment and
reprocessing, which can produce the key ingredient for atomic weapons,
and insists its nuclear program is designed only to produce power.
Others, particularly the United States and Israel, maintain it is a
cover for weapons development.
Amid discussions on the incentives plan presented to Iran last
month, Rice and Burns have pushed for the administration to open an
"interest section" in Tehran, similar to the one it operates in Havana
that would allow for greater U.S. outreach to the Iranian people.
"We want to have people-to-people contact with the Iranian people," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said Thursday.
Despite reports that an announcement of such a move could come
within a month, senior officials familiar with the proposal say no
decision has yet been made and that the idea, which The Associated
Press reported last month, remains under active consideration.
Since the proposal became public in June, Iranian President Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad has said his government would be willing to consider a
request from the United States to establish a diplomatic outpost in
Tehran. The United States has yet to make such a request, officials
said.
(© 2008 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)
