IAEA to Bush: Talk to Iran

The point got buried in many of the news reports out of Vienna, but Mohamed ElBaradei, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, made a strong appeal Monday for the U.S. to start talking to Iran. He didn't specifically propose that the Bush administration drop its condition that Iran freeze its uranium enrichment program as a precondition to direct Iranian-American talks on Iran's nuclear program. But he made it clear that Washington has to be more creative than it has been to date in finding a way of talking and therefore reducing the chances of war. ElBaradei's views will loom increasingly large in the coming months as the Bush administration pursues an internal debate on whether to use military force to halt Iran's nuclear program. Iran says it is for peaceful nuclear energy purposes, but the Bush administration says it's for making a nuclear weapon.

Here's what ElBaradei said after an IAEA Board of Governor's Meeting in Vienna (or, here's an mp3 file of ElBaradei speaking on Iran):

One of the reasons, in my view, that made it possible to reach an agreement with the DPRK [Democratic People's Republic of Korea, aka North Korea] was that the Parties decided to talk face-to-face, and the US agreed to talk to the DPRK directly. I would like to see that also happening in the case of Iran: a resumption of the talk with the six parties and Iran. Most importantly, a dialogue between the US and Iran would help in so many ways, enabling us to make progress. You need to sit together, discuss your problems, discuss how you reconcile your differences, build confidence, and understand where the other party is coming from. The earlier we create the conditions for the parties to sit around a negotiating table and talk face-to-face, the better the prospect that we will make progress.

ElBaradei thinks he is detecting some signs of cooperation from Iran, meanwhile:

On Iran´s enrichment programme, our inspectors were there last week and saw a slowing in the process of commissioning new cascades. This is something again I welcome. I talked to Mr. [Ali] Larijani [head of Iran's nuclear negotiating team] about it, and made it clear to him that there is no need to expand their programme at this stage, at a time when the international community is asking them to freeze it, dismantle it or suspend it. We have seen fairly slow development in commissioning new cascades or feeding of material. This is something which, as I said, I welcome. At this stage, Iran needs to do everything to cool things down, and we need to shift from a mode of confrontation to a mode of goodwill and cooperation. And I hope that the slowing down will continue. As I said, if that were to be coupled by an act of cooperation by Iran in resolving the outstanding issues, that will definitely be a step in the right direction, influencing the action of the Security Council and the conditions for returning to the negotiating table.

--By Scott MacLeod/Cairo