Tap Dancing into Talks
27 February 2007 10:27 am by Taylor Marsh
Tap Dancing into Talks
As Afghanistan gets more
dangerous, Kissinger\’s influence is felt.
The Bush administration has agreed to sit around a negotiating table with
official representatives of Iran and Syria next month — as part of a planned
regional conference in Baghdad to discuss ways to stabilize Iraq.In joining the Baghdad conference, the administration is tiptoeing into what
has become one of the most contentious issues in the roiling Iraq debate.
Critics for months have been urging the administration to end its diplomatic
isolation of Iran and Syria and begin a constructive dialogue with them about
how to stabilize Iraq. Even former secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who
has generally supported administration policy on Iraq, argued in an op-ed
piece last weekend that it’s time to end the diplomatic quarantine and
convene an international conference on Iraq.The Iraqi government is expected to announce the regional conference as early
as Tuesday.The government will invite representatives of the five permanent
members of the U.N. Security Council — Britain, France, Russia, China and
the United States — in addition to all of its Mideast neighbors.Though it will bring together American, Syrian and Iranian representatives,
the Baghdad meeting doesn’t signal a direct U.S. diplomatic engagement
with Iran and Syria. A senior State Department official said Monday night
that it wasn’t likely there would be separate bilateral meetings with
Iran or Syria. Rather, the planned Baghdad meeting is an extension of the
administration’s current policy of using the Iraqi government as the
channel for discussions with Iran and Syria about Iraqi security. … …
