MAYBE WE COULD HOLD A MEETING IN MUNICH

Talk to Iran, Bush urged (David Nason, The Australian, May 6th, 2006)

US President George W.Bush has used a speech in Washington to declare the US's "unshakeable" commitment to defend Israel from aggression.

Mr Bush said the US and Israel were "natural allies" with ties that would "never be broken".

The comments, made at a dinner to mark the 100th anniversary of the American Jewish Committee in Washington on Thursday night, were aimed squarely at Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and at the recently elected Hamas regime in Palestine.

Mr Ahmadinejad has denied the Holocaust and called for Israel to be "wiped off the map" while Hamas refuses to recognise the Jewish state.

Mr Bush said democratically elected leaders could not have "one foot in the camp of democracy and one foot in the camp of terror". He said the US would continue to "rally the world" against terrorism.

Mr Bush saved his harshest words for Tehran, accusing it of "sponsoring terrorists, destabilising the region, threatening Israel and defying the world with its ambitions for nuclear weapons".

But Mr Bush's comments came on a day that the US was under increasing pressure to negotiate directly with Tehran over Iran's nuclear program.

Iran has defied repeated UN requests to cease its uranium enrichment and nuclear research and development activities and now faces the prospect of a UN Security Council resolution next week that could open the door to economic sanctions, and possibly military action.

But a growing number of current and former world leaders, including former US president Bill Clinton, former US secretary of state Madeleine Albright and German Defence Minister Franz Josef Jung, believe a diplomatic breakthrough will be difficult without direct talks between Washington and Tehran that Mr Bush has so far refused to authorise.

The influential Senate Republican Richard Lugar has also urged dialogue and was joined on Thursday by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who said "intensified diplomatic efforts" were needed to settle the dispute.

Mr Annan said the diplomacy had to put something on the table for Iran and suggested that offers of nuclear technology and assurances that "nobody is going to blow them up" might be appropriate.

"It would also be good if the US were to be at the table with the Europeans, the Iranians, the Russians, to try and work this out," Mr Annan said in an interview on US public television.

"I think if everybody - all of the stakeholders and the key players - were around the table, I think it would be possible to work out a package that would satisfy the concerns of everybody.

Some days one despairs that all the might of the United States Armed Forces may not be sufficient to protect us from the West’s chronic, ostrich-like belief that the leaders of rogue states like Iran and North Korea do not really mean what they say, that they have a secret, much more moderate agenda and that a frank and friendly chat around the table will produce the peaceful solution we know everybody wants and must be out there somewhere. This is the faith of the naive fundamentalist, not informed international diplomacy. Given 20th century history, it is astounding and depressing to see how fervently so many of us cling to such dangerous naivite.

For an interesting take on the internal situation in Iran, see here.