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| US Ambassador to UN: We will engage in diplomacy with Iran |
| 2009-01-27 |
| US President Barack Obama's administration will engage in "direct diplomacy" with Iran, the newly installed US ambassador to the United Nations said Monday. Not since before the 1979 Iranian revolution are US officials believed to have conducted wide-ranging direct diplomacy with Iranian officials. But US Ambassador Susan Rice warned that Iran must meet UN Security Council demands to suspend uranium enrichment before any talks on its nuclear program. "The dialogue and diplomacy must go hand in hand with a very firm message from the United States and the international community that Iran needs to meet its obligations as defined by the Security Council. And its continuing refusal to do so will only cause pressure to increase," she told reporters during a brief question-and-answer session. Her comments, reflecting Obama's signals for improved relations with America's foes after eight years under former US president George W. Bush, came shortly after she met with UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on her first day on the job. Iran still considers the US the "Great Satan," but a day after Obama was sworn in, it said it was "ready for new approaches by the United States." Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said his country would look into the idea of allowing the US to open a diplomatic office in Teheran, the first since 1979. Rice said the US remains "deeply concerned about the threat that Iran's nuclear program poses to the region, indeed to the United States and the entire international community." "We look forward to engaging in vigorous diplomacy that includes direct diplomacy with Iran," she said. It would include "continued collaboration and partnership" with the other four permanent members of the Security Council - Britain, China, France and Russia - along with Germany, Rice said. "And we will look at what is necessary and appropriate with respect to maintaining pressure toward that goal of ending Iran's nuclear program," she said. In recent years, Iranian and American officials have negotiated in the same room on talks about Afghanistan that involved other countries' diplomats. They also talked face to face in Baghdad but the agenda was limited to Iraqi security. |
| Posted by:Fred |
| #4 She should call her EU friends and find out how well this works, since they've been doing it for the last seven or eight years... |
| Posted by: tu3031 2009-01-27 11:15 |
| #3 Waging law again, looks like. |
| Posted by: mojo 2009-01-27 11:13 |
| #2 Good luck with that. I hear they're selling bridges too. |
| Posted by: Spot 2009-01-27 08:20 |
| #1 At your peril. |
| Posted by: newc 2009-01-27 04:46 |