Word: rice
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Late Thursday, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and top diplomats from the UK, France, Germany, the EU, Russia and China met in Vienna for eight and a half hours and emerged with what British Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett hailed as? "a set of far reaching proposals" aimed at resolving the confrontation with Iran over its nuclear program...
...Secretary Rice's offer comes on the eve of her meeting in Vienna with the foreign ministers of Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China to finalize a new package of incentives and threats to be presented to Tehran in the hope of persuading it to comply with Security Council demands. The Bush Administration's previous position with regards to Iran had been under mounting criticism from within the U.S. foreign policy establishment, and from key U.S. allies. Iran had also added to that pressure by combining its defiance of UN demands with repeated signals that it wants talks with Washington...
...making the offer conditional on Iran suspending uranium enrichment, Secretary Rice hopes to turn the tables on Tehran. After all, though Iran is signaling an openness to negotiate a deal with the Europeans, it insists that it won't abrogate its right, under the Non-Proliferation Treaty, to enrich uranium. Tehran has signaled a flexibility on time frames, and also a willingness to consider importing its reactor fuel if it is allowed to maintain the small-scale uranium enrichment research facility it is currently operating at Natanz, albeit under closer international supervision. The U.S., Britain and France have rejected that...
...there is no doubt that security guarantees is the trickiest issue in terms of incentives for Iran, which wants the U.S. and other supporters of regime change to formally renounce any such goal. Secretary Rice stressed that the U.S. concerns are not limited to the nuclear issue, and extend to issues such as terrorism and Iraq. But Iran reportedly offered in April 2003 to engage in talks to address all such concerns, as well as the issue of Iranian support for Palestinian radical groups, and that offer was rebuffed by the Bush Administration. The troubles confronting the U.S. in both...
...While the Iranians are unlikely to simply accept the terms set by Secretary Rice, their mastery of diplomacy suggests they're also unlikely to flatly reject the offer. More likely, they'll come back with a more qualified, nuanced offer - not altogether different from the one made by Condi Rice. As long as both sides prefer to avoid a violent confrontation, that's the kind of careful chess game they'll continue to play...