This I must say is impressive. This is what the New York Times is supposed to do. Comfort the disturbed and disturb the comforted. It's long past overdue, but if it prevents or even delays the 'Decider' from attacking Iran it's worth it.

Update: Jeffrey at ACW has all the citations you need from the Leverett piece from the NYT.

Update 2: All of the documents regarding the redactions are included in this post after the jump. Again, Thanks to Jeff at ACW for the goods!

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Associated Press Online

May 14, 2003 Wednesday

SECTION: INTERNATIONAL NEWS

LENGTH: 751 words

HEADLINE: Khatami Condemns Attacks in Saudi Arabia

BODY:
BEIRUT, Lebanon (AP)- Iranian President Mohammad Khatami on Wednesday condemned the terrorist bombings in Saudi Arabia that killed at least 34 people and said that despite "important and big" policy differences with the United States, the recently disclosed U.S.-Iranian talks in Geneva would continue.

The attack on compounds housings Western civilians in Saudi Arabia "by any person or party and for whatever goal, is condemned," Khatami told reporters at a news conference in Beirut. He said he had sent Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah a condolence telegram.

He said such an attack provides "pretext for those who want to impose wars on people."

Iran, despite strained relations with the United States, also condemned the September 2001 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington that were blamed on al-Qaida, the terror group run by Saudi-born dissident Osama bin Laden that also has been linked to the Saudi attacks.

Iran rejects U.S. labeling of it as a terrorist-sponsoring state and of groups such as the Iranian-backed Lebanese group Hezbollah and Palestinian groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad as terrorists.

Responding to U.S. pressure on Syria and Lebanon to disarm Hezbollah, Khatami linked the militant group's disarmament to the elimination of Israel's weapons of mass destruction.

"The threat in our region is represented in the presence in Israel of tens of atomic weapons and hundreds of arms of mass destruction," Khatami said. "If disarmament (of Hezbollah) is a must, then in the first place it is Israel, which possesses chemical and biological weapons, that should be disarmed. Lebanon cannot be deprived of the resistance (Hezbollah) as long as part of its territory is under occupation."

On Iraq, Khatami told the news conference that Iran opposes the creation of a government in Iraq dominated by a specific sect. On Tuesday, addressing an overwhelmingly Shiite rally in Beirut, he called for "a one-person, one-vote" elections in Iraq, a formula clearly favoring Shiites who constitute 60 percent of Iraq's population.

News that U.S. and Iranian officials have set aside decades of animosity to discuss issues such as Afghanistan and Iraq - both countries bordering Iran - emerged during Khatami's three-day visit to Lebanon, which he was wrapping up today to go to Syria. U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said in Cairo on Monday that officials from America and Iran have met several times in Switzerland to try ease friction.

"We have nothing new under the sun concerning the discussions," Khatami said Wednesday, expressing "astonishment" at reaction to news of the talks.

He said Iranian and U.S. officials have been meeting under U.N. auspices for the past year or two. They discussed in particular Afghanistan, Iran's eastern neighbor, and "every now and then" spoke about Iraq, Iran's western neighbor.

The discussions "were repeated several times and will be repeated," Khatami said.

Iran and the United States have had no diplomatic relations since the 1979 Islamic revolution which overthrew the pro-Western monarchy and the takeover of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran by militant students.

Khatami, who leads the reformist camp in Iran that advocates better relations with the United States, said the meetings in Geneva "did not discuss relations Iran and the United States. "The differences are important and big," he said, blaming U.S. policies.

Khatami said Iran has "objections" to U.S. dealings with the Iranian opposition group Mujahedeen Khalq, which is based in Iraq.

"Regretfully, an understanding and agreement was reached with the terrorist group when we expected from the American side a campaign against this terrorist group, which has committed the worst acts of terrorism. We expected the American side to deal with this terrorist group in a way that proves America's claims," he said.

American officials have deemed the Iranian group, which has for year fought Iran's Islamic rulers from Iraq with the backing of Saddam Hussein, a terrorist organization. The Mujahedeen Khalq reached an April 15 truce with the U.S. army under which it could keep its weapons to defend itself against Iranian-backed attacks. But continued military activity prompted the Americans to order the group to surrender or face attack.

Under a new deal, the Mujahedeen began turning their weapons to American occupation forces on Monday. The Mujahedeen have seven days to consolidate its troops in one area and its weaponry in another northeast of Baghdad.

---

Copyright 2004 The Washington Post
The Washington Post

May 6, 2004 Thursday
Final Edition

SECTION: Editorial; A35

LENGTH: 1187 words

HEADLINE: Time to Deal With Iran

BYLINE: James Dobbins

BODY:

Iranian diplomats have shown up in Baghdad, reportedly at British government urging. London hopes that Iranian intervention can prove helpful in tamping down Shiite resistance to the U.S.-led coalition and in building support for an emerging Iraqi interim government. This must sound odd to American ears, accustomed to hearing the Iranian regime described as a member of the "axis of evil." But this would not be the first time Tehran has come to Washington's aid in the war on terror.

Before there was Operation Iraqi Freedom, there was Operation Enduring Freedom. Americans tend to think of that earlier campaign for the liberation of Afghanistan as a similarly U.S.-initiated and dominated effort. But in fact the war to displace the Taliban had been underway long before the United States became involved. It was being fought by a coalition consisting of Iran, Russia, India and the Northern Alliance. In the aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001, the United States joined this coalition and, with the essential addition of U.S. air power, Northern Alliance forces were able to take Kabul and drive the Taliban from power.

Two weeks after the fall of Kabul, all the major elements of the Afghan opposition came together at a U.N.-sponsored conference in Bonn. The objective was to create a broadly based successor government to the Taliban. As the U.S. representative at that gathering, I worked both with the Afghan delegations and with the other national representatives who had the greatest influence among them, which is to say the Iranian, Russian and Indian envoys. All these delegations proved helpful. None was more so than the Iranians. On two occasions Iranian representatives made particularly memorable contributions. The original version of the Bonn agreement, drafted by the United Nations and amended by the Afghans who were present, neglected to mention either democracy or the war on terrorism. It was the Iranian representative who spotted these omissions and successfully urged that the newly emerging Afghan government be required to commit to both.

The second was even more decisive. The conference was in its final hours. The German chancellor was due to arrive momentarily for the closing ceremony. Yet we still lacked agreement on the central issue: composition of an interim Afghan government. The Northern Alliance was insisting on 18 of 25 ministerial portfolios, which would have marginalized other opposition groups. From 2 a.m. to 5 a.m. the four key envoys -- those from Washington, Tehran, Moscow and New Delhi -- worked along with the U.N. representative, Lakhdar Brahimi, and our German host to persuade the recalcitrant Northern Alliance delegate to make the necessary compromises.

Two weeks later President Hamid Karzai and his new cabinet were inaugurated in Kabul. The most senior foreign delegation was headed by Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi, who had stopped in Herat on his way in to pick up the one warlord, Ismail Khan, whose attendance and support for the new government was most in doubt. At the Tokyo donors' conference the following month, Iran pledged $500 million in aid to Afghan reconstruction, by far the largest sum from any neighboring state or developing nation.

In March 2002, donor nations met again in Geneva to address the new Afghan government's needs in the security realm. I met there with the same Iranian diplomats who had proved so helpful at the Bonn conference. On this occasion they had with them the Iranian general who had been overseeing military assistance to the Northern Alliance through its long years of resistance, up to and through its ultimate victory. Responding to a U.S. request that the international community help build a new national Afghan army, the Iranians offered to quarter, clothe and train as many as 20,000 recruits for the new Afghan force, and to construct barracks in Afghanistan.

I expressed reservations, noting that troops trained by the Iranians might employ a different military doctrine from those taught by U.S. instructors. "Don't worry," the Iranian general said, only half jokingly, "we are still using the same manuals you left behind in 1979." I suggested that the Iranian and U.S.-trained units might have divided loyalties. "Well," my interlocutor responded, "we trained, equipped and continue to pay the troops with which you toppled the Taliban and are now rooting out al Qaeda. Are you encountering any problems with their loyalty?" I had to admit that we were not.

These and other Iranian overtures for collaboration in support of the Karzai government and against al Qaeda and other extremists were duly reported to Washington and discussed among Cabinet principals. None was ever taken up. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell sent personal letters of thanks to every foreign minister represented at the Bonn conference except the one whose envoy may have been the most helpful, the Iranian. Dialogue with Iranian representatives was confined over the next year to infrequent, low-level and inconclusive exchanges, which, shortly after U.S. forces entered Baghdad, were suspended altogether.

Of course, even as Iranian diplomats and military officers were supporting U.S. efforts to install and sustain a successor government to the Taliban, other Iranians with official connections were, and are, rendering support to radical Palestinian groups such as the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas). It was this Iranian support of terrorism directed against Israel, along with the Iranian nuclear program and the refusal of Iran to turn over senior al Qaeda operatives in its custody, that caused Washington to limit and eventually curtail dialogue with Tehran on Afghanistan and Iraq.

In the Balkans in the mid-1990s we learned that it was impossible to put a nation back together if its neighbors were determined to pull it apart. That was why the leaders of Serbia and Croatia, Slobodan Milosevic and Franjo Tudjman, who between them shared the principal responsibility for the Bosnian genocide, became the Clinton administration's main partners in negotiating and then implementing the Dayton peace accords. In Afghanistan we learned again that successful nation-building requires strange bedfellows, only to forget the lesson a year later in Iraq.

In recent weeks President Bush has come to accept a central role for the United Nations in Iraq and has proposed an expanded one for NATO, both long-standing British wishes. It is good to see that London has begun to engage Tehran more constructively, and it is desirable that Washington should do likewise. Cooperation on Iraq will be more difficult than it was on Afghanistan, and Iranian policy is likely to be more internally divided in its cooperation with the United States. But there is no good reason not to be talking to those in Iran who seek to democratically reform their own theocracy and have no desire to see one emerge in Iraq.

James Dobbins was the Bush administration's first special envoy for Afghanistan. He is director of the International Security and Defense Policy Center at the Rand Corp.

---

Copyright 2003 British Broadcasting Corporation
BBC Monitoring Middle East - Political
Supplied by BBC Worldwide Monitoring

May 20, 2003, Tuesday

LENGTH: 267 words

HEADLINE: Iran: Foreign minister briefs MPs on talks with US

SOURCE: IRNA news agency, Tehran, in English 1751 gmt 20 May 03

BODY:
Text of report in English by Iranian news agency IRNA

Tehran, 20 May: Majlis Commission on National Security and Foreign Affairs on Tuesday 20 May studied events in Iraq, Iran-US negotiations, Rapporteur Mrs Elaheh Kula'i said.

She told IRNA that in today's meeting, Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi briefed 16 MPs on the messages exchanged between Iran and the United States and Iraq's developments.

Kula'i added, "Kharrazi said that since Iran-US ties were severed, the two states have been following up the issues of mutual concern via their interest sections at the Swiss and Algerian embassies."

Quoting the foreign minister, Kula'i said the two states have been communicating and exchanging views on Afghanistan, Iraq, Al-Qa'idah and the MKO (Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization) in various ways.

"The messages exchanged between the two parties have, not only, been fruitful and positive, but, contributed to eliminating any scepticism," she quoted Kharrazi as saying.

Referring to further mutual contacts on the issue of Afghanistan held at the initiation of the UN-sponsored Geneva Conference 6+2, which was attended by Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and neighbouring countries, plus the United States and Russia, Kharrazi told the MPs that Iran and the US proceeded with talks on different issues to secure their own interests.

"Concerning Iraq, exchange of views were made by official channels and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is in charge of implementing the decisions made by the respective bodies concerning foreign policy," she quoted Kharrazi as saying.

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Copyright 2006 The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com
The Washington Post

June 18, 2006 Sunday
Final Edition

SECTION: A Section; A16

LENGTH: 1019 words

HEADLINE: In 2003, U.S. Spurned Iran's Offer of Dialogue;
Some Officials Lament Lost Opportunity

BYLINE: Glenn Kessler, Washington Post Staff Writer

BODY:

Just after the lightning takeover of Baghdad by U.S. forces three years ago, an unusual two-page document spewed out of a fax machine at the Near East bureau of the State Department. It was a proposal from Iran for a broad dialogue with the United States, and the fax suggested everything was on the table -- including full cooperation on nuclear programs, acceptance of Israel and the termination of Iranian support for Palestinian militant groups.

But top Bush administration officials, convinced the Iranian government was on the verge of collapse, belittled the initiative. Instead, they formally complained to the Swiss ambassador who had sent the fax with a cover letter certifying it as a genuine proposal supported by key power centers in Iran, former administration officials said.

Last month, the Bush administration abruptly shifted policy and agreed to join talks previously led by European countries over Iran's nuclear program. But several former administration officials say the United States missed an opportunity in 2003 at a time when American strength seemed at its height -- and Iran did not have a functioning nuclear program or a gusher of oil revenue from soaring energy demand.

"At the time, the Iranians were not spinning centrifuges, they were not enriching uranium," said Flynt Leverett, who was a senior director on the National Security Council staff then and saw the Iranian proposal. He described it as "a serious effort, a respectable effort to lay out a comprehensive agenda for U.S.-Iranian rapprochement."

While the Iranian approach has been previously reported, the actual document making the offer has surfaced only in recent weeks. Trita Parsi, a Middle East expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said he obtained it from Iranian sources. The Washington Post confirmed its authenticity with Iranian and former U.S. officials.

Parsi said the U.S. victory in Iraq frightened the Iranians because U.S. forces had routed in three weeks an army that Iran had failed to defeat during a bloody eight-year war.

The document lists a series of Iranian aims for the talks, such as ending sanctions, full access to peaceful nuclear technology and a recognition of its "legitimate security interests." Iran agreed to put a series of U.S. aims on the agenda, including full cooperation on nuclear safeguards, "decisive action" against terrorists, coordination in Iraq, ending "material support" for Palestinian militias and accepting the Saudi initiative for a two-state solution in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The document also laid out an agenda for negotiations, with possible steps to be achieved at a first meeting and the development of negotiating road maps on disarmament, terrorism and economic cooperation.

Newsday has previously reported that the document was primarily the work of Sadegh Kharazi, Iran's ambassador to France and nephew of Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharazi and passed on by the Swiss ambassador to Tehran, Tim Guldimann. The Swiss government is a diplomatic channel for communications between Tehran and Washington because the two countries broke off relations after the 1979 seizure of U.S. embassy personnel.

Leverett said Guldimann included a cover letter that it was an authoritative initiative that had the support of then-President Mohammad Khatami and supreme religious leader Ali Khamenei.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has stressed that the U.S. decision to join the nuclear talks was not an effort to strike a "grand bargain" with Iran. Earlier this month, she made the first official confirmation of the Iranian proposal in an interview with National Public Radio.

"What the Iranians wanted earlier was to be one-on-one with the United States so that this could be about the United States and Iran," said Rice, who was Bush's national security adviser when the fax was received. "Now it is Iran and the international community, and Iran has to answer to the international community. I think that's the strongest possible position to be in."

Current White House and State Department officials declined to comment further on the Iranian offer.

Paul R. Pillar, former national intelligence officer for the Near East and South Asia, said that it is true "there is less daylight between the United States and Europe, thanks in part to Rice's energetic diplomacy." But he said that only partially offsets the fact that the U.S. position is "inherently weaker now" because of Iraq. He described the Iranian approach as part of a series of efforts by Iran to engage with the Bush administration. "I think there have been a lot of lost opportunities," he said, citing as one example a failure to build on the useful cooperation Iran provided in Afghanistan.

Richard N. Haass, head of policy planning at the State Department at the time and now president of the Council on Foreign Relations, said the Iranian approach was swiftly rejected because in the administration "the bias was toward a policy of regime change." He said it is difficult to know whether the proposal was fully supported by the "multiple governments" that run Iran, but he felt it was worth exploring.

"To use an oil analogy, we could have drilled a dry hole," he said. "But I didn't see what we had to lose. I did not share the assessment of many in the administration that the Iranian regime was on the brink."

Parsi said that based on his conversations with the Iranian officials, he believes the failure of the United States to even respond to the offer had an impact on the government. Parsi, who is writing a book on Iran-Israeli relations, said he believes the Iranians were ready to dramatically soften their stance on Israel, essentially taking the position of other Islamic countries such as Malaysia. Instead, Iranian officials decided that the United States cared not about Iranian policies but about Iranian power.

The incident "strengthened the hands of those in Iran who believe the only way to compel the United States to talk or deal with Iran is not by sending peace offers but by being a nuisance," Parsi said.

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Copyright 2003 The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com

The Washington Post

October 29, 2003 Wednesday
Final Edition

SECTION: A Section; A21

LENGTH: 408 words

HEADLINE: U.S. Ready to Resume Talks With Iran, Armitage Says

BYLINE: Glenn Kessler, Washington Post Staff Writer

BODY:

Six months after halting talks with Iran, the Bush administration said yesterday that it is prepared to resume discreet discussions with the Islamic republic over Iraq, Afghanistan and other issues.

"We are prepared to engage in limited discussions with the government of Iran about areas of mutual interest as appropriate," Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage said in testimony prepared for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. But he stressed that the talks would not be a "broad dialogue with the aim of normalizing relations," which were terminated after the 1979 revolution.

U.S. and Iranian officials had met several times in Geneva both before and after the war in Iraq, with the last session taking place May 3. But the administration halted the contacts after the May 12 bombings of residential compounds in Saudi Arabia, alleging that Iran was harboring al Qaeda operatives responsible for the attacks.

The Iranians have denied the charge and have repeatedly pressed the administration to restart the contacts. Iran, which shares a long border with Iraq, has sought to demonstrate its willingness to cooperate with the administration, including recognizing the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council and contributing resources for Iraq at a donors conference last week in Madrid.

The Bush administration has urged Iran to turn over al Qaeda members. Armitage in his testimony linked Iran's cooperation on al Qaeda to better relations with the United States, saying "resolution of this issue would be an important step in U.S.-Iranian relations." But he told reporters that it is not a prerequisite to restarting the talks.

Iran has privately suggested to the administration that it will turn over al Qaeda members in exchange for captured members of the Mujaheddin-e Khalq (MEK), an Iranian opposition group that had operated out of Iraq. Armitage ruled out such a deal yesterday, "because we can't be sure of the way they'd be treated," referring to the MEK members. He said officials were questioning MEK members to determine who had terrorist connections. "In my understanding, a certain number of those do," he said, adding that they will face charges.

Under questioning, Armitage said it was a mistake for the U.S. military to have arranged a cease-fire agreement with the MEK during the war, a decision that alarmed Iran. "We shouldn't have been signing a cease-fire with a foreign terrorist organization," he said.

---

Copyright 2003 The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com

The Washington Post

May 25, 2003 Sunday
Final Edition

SECTION: A SECTION; Pg. A01

LENGTH: 1219 words

HEADLINE: U.S. Eyes Pressing Uprising In Iran;
Officials Cite Al Qaeda Links, Nuclear Program

BYLINE: Glenn Kessler, Washington Post Staff Writer

BODY:

The Bush administration, alarm-ed by intelligence suggesting that al Qaeda operatives in Iran had a role in the May 12 suicide bombings in Saudi Arabia, has suspended once-promising contacts with Iran and appears ready to embrace an aggressive policy of trying to destabilize the Iranian government, administration officials said.

Senior Bush administration officials will meet Tuesday at the White House to discuss the evolving strategy toward the Islamic republic, with Pentagon officials pressing hard for public and private actions that they believe could lead to the toppling of the government through a popular uprising, officials said.

The State Department, which had encouraged some form of engagement with the Iranians, appears inclined to accept such a policy, especially if Iran does not take any visible steps to deal with the suspected al Qaeda operatives before Tuesday, officials said. But State Department officials are concerned that the level of popular discontent there is much lower than Pentagon officials believe, leading to the possibility that U.S. efforts could ultimately discredit reformers in Iran.

In any case, the Saudi Arabia bombings have ended the tentative signs of engagement between Iran and the United States that had emerged during the wars against Afghanistan and Iraq.

U.S. and Iranian officials had met periodically to discuss issues of mutual concern, including search-and-rescue missions and the tracking down of al Qaeda operatives. But, after the suicide bombings at three residential compounds in Riyadh, the Bush administration canceled the next planned meeting.

"We're headed down the same path of the last 20 years," one State Department official said. "An inflexible, unimaginative policy of just say no."

U.S. officials have also been deeply concerned about Iran's nuclear weapons program, which has the support of both elected reformers and conservative clerics. The Bush administration has pressed the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. nuclear watchdog, to issue a critical report next month on Iran's nuclear activities. Officials have sought to convince Russia and China -- two major suppliers of Iran's nuclear power program -- that Iran is determined to possess nuclear weapons, a campaign that one U.S. official said is winning support.

But a major factor in the new stance toward Iran consists of what have been called "very troubling intercepts" before and after the Riyadh attacks, which killed 34 people, including nine suicide bombers. The intercepts suggested that al Qaeda operatives in Iran were involved in the planning of the bombings.

Earlier this week, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld accused Iran of harboring al Qaeda members. "There's no question but that there have been and are today senior al Qaeda leaders in Iran, and they are busy," Rumsfeld said. Iranian officials, however, have vehemently denied that they have granted al Qaeda leaders safe haven in the country.

Until the Saudi bombings, some officials said, Iran had been relatively cooperative on al Qaeda. Since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Iran has turned over al Qaeda officials to Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan. In talks, U.S. officials had repeatedly warned Iranian officials that if any al Qaeda operatives in Iran are implicated in attacks against Americans, it would have serious consequences for relations between the two countries.

Those talks, however, were held with representatives of Iran's foreign ministry. Other parts of the Iranian government are controlled not by elected reformers, but by conservative mullahs.

A senior administration official who is skeptical of the Pentagon's arguments said most of the al Qaeda members -- fewer than a dozen -- appear to be located in an isolated area of northeastern Iran, near the border with Afghanistan. He described the area as a drug-smuggling terrorist haven that is tolerated by key members of the Revolutionary Guards in part because they skim money off some of the activities there. It is not clear how much control the central Iranian government has over this area, he said.

"I don't think the elected government knows much about it," he said. "Why should you punish the rest of Iran," he asked, just because the government cannot act in this area?

Flynt Leverett, who recently left the White House to join the Brookings Institution's Saban Center for Middle East Policy, said the administration may be taking a gamble. "It is imprudent to assume that the Islamic Republic will collapse like a house of cards in a time frame that is going to be meaningful to us," he said. "What it means is we will end up with an Iran that has nuclear weapons and no dialogue with the United States with regard to our terrorist concerns."

Ever since President Bush labeled Iran last year as part of an "axis of evil" -- along with North Korea and Iraq -- the administration has struggled to define its policy toward the Islamic republic, which terminated relations with the United States after Iran's 1979 revolution. The administration never formally adopted a policy of "regime change," but it also never seriously tried to establish a dialogue.

In July, Bush signaled a harder line when he issued a strongly worded presidential statement in which he praised large pro-democracy street demonstrations in Iran. Administration officials said at the time that they had abandoned any hope of working with President Mohammad Khatami and his reformist allies in the Iranian government, and would turn their attention toward democracy supporters among the Iranian people.

But the prospect of war with Iraq reopened some discreet contacts, which took place under U.N. supervision in Europe. The contacts encouraged some in the State Department to believe that there was an opening for greater cooperation.

In an interview in February with the Los Angeles Times, Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage drew a distinction between the confrontational approach the administration had taken with Iraq and North Korea and the approach it had adopted with Iran. "The axis of evil was a valid comment, [but] I would note there's one dramatic difference between Iran and the other two axes of evil, and that would be its democracy. [And] you approach a democracy differently," Armitage said.

At one of the meetings, in early January, the United States signaled that it would target the Iraq-based camps of the Mujaheddin-e Khalq (MEK), or People's Mujaheddin, a major group opposing the Iranian government.

The MEK soon became caught up in the policy struggle between the State Department and the Pentagon.

After the camps were bombed, the U.S. military arranged a cease-fire with the group, infuriating the Iranians. Some Pentagon officials, impressed by the military discipline and equipment of the thousands of MEK troops, began to envision them as a potential military force for use against Tehran, much like the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan.

But the MEK is also listed as a terrorist organization by the State Department. Under pressure from State, the White House earlier this month ordered the Pentagon to disarm the MEK troops -- a decision that was secretly conveyed by U.S. officials to Iranian representatives at a meeting in Geneva on May 3.

Nine days later, the suicide bombers struck in Saudi Arabia.

---

Time Magazine
Saturday, Feb. 23, 2002

Iran, Afghanistan Juggle Hot Potato Hekmatyar
Eager to avoid "meddling" in Afghanistan, Tehran wants to expel an Afghan troublemaker. But Kabul doesn't want Hekmatyar to come home

By TONY KARON AND AZADEH MOAEVENI

The U.S. wants Iran to stop meddling in Afghanistan by supporting those who would undermine the authority of the interim government of Hamid Karzai. Yet last week, the Tehran government claims, it was asked by both Karzai and Washington to hold off on expelling a fanatically anti-American warlord who has been organizing a campaign against the new government in Kabul and its U.S. backers. Administration officials deny that the U.S. has made such requests.

Iran?s curious claim concerns the paunchy Pashtun warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who currently lives in Tehran. The former prime minister who has fought against every Afghan government since 1979 has made no exception of the latest administration in Kabul. He recently told an interviewer that Karzai's government "has no value or meaning" as long as foreign troops remain in Afghanistan.

It seems far-fetched that a tribal chieftain secluded in a villa in northern Tehran, his phone lines cut and official visits banned could pose any threat to neighboring Afghanistan. Hekmatyar has been holed up in Iran since being driven out of Kabul by the Taliban in 1996, and has little support, even his one-time followers, and lacks the war chest to raise an army. Most Afghanis loathe him as the commander responsible for reducing Kabul to rubble in a fierce power struggle with rival commanders that killed tens of thousands of people in the early 1990s. But his virulent anti-Americanism makes him a dangerous loose cannon amid the power struggles that persist throughout the Pashtun heartland. And he makes no bones about his intentions: "We prefer involvement in internal war rather than occupation by foreigners and foreign troops," he told an interviewer.

And his anti-American rhetoric may be more than just wild ranting by a marginal former mujahid. Reports from Kandahar suggest his followers have been involved in attacks on the U.S. airbase there, and have also been seeking out allies among disaffected local warlords for a campaign against the new government and its American allies. Unconfirmed reports from Afghanistan also suggest that Hekmatyar's supporters may have been conspiring with his erstwhile Taliban foes in Pakistan to launch a new campaign against the Americans and the Karzai government.

Not surprisingly, the U.S. wants Iran to end Hekmatyar's activities. And Iran's reformist elected government appears inclined to comply. They shut down his offices two weeks ago and the country's top foreign policy body, the Supreme National Security Council, voted last week to expel Hekmatyar from Iran. But Iranian media reports suggested the delay in implementing that decision resulted from urgent appeals from Washington and Kabul to hold off on expelling him. The Iranian daily Qods recently quoted an official source saying that "Karzai has asked Tehran to keep Hekmatyar in Iran so that Kabul is always informed about his whereabouts and activities."

One possible reason for requesting the delay: Following the closure of his offices, Hekmatyar warned that he would return to Afghanistan if forced to leave Iran. According to a spokesperson, the State Department hasn't sent any direct messages to Tehran about Hekmatyar. But Washington's preference is clear: "We're not looking for him to go back to Afghanistan," says the spokesperson. Iran would have liked him gone sooner, but according to Foreign Minister Kharrazi: "The reason Hekmatyar is still in Iran is because our friends and those outside the region have requested it, but he is free to leave the country."

Presumably, though, not if he's headed home. Sources close to Iran's Foreign Ministry claim Tehran will expel Hekmatyar from the country next week, following the visit of Hamid Karzai. And close associates expect that his next home may be in Baghdad.

---

Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company
The New York Times

January 24, 2006 Tuesday
Late Edition - Final

SECTION: Section A; Column 1; Editorial Desk; Pg. 21

LENGTH: 1164 words

HEADLINE: The Gulf Between Us

BYLINE: By Flynt Leverett.

Flynt Leverett, a former senior director for Middle East affairs at the National Security Council, is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution's Saban Center for Middle East Policy. He is writing a book about the future of Saudi Arabia.

DATELINE: WASHINGTON

BODY:

AS the United States and its European partners consider their next steps to contain the Iranian nuclear threat, let's recall how poorly the Bush administration has handled this issue. During its five years in office, the administration has turned away from every opportunity to put relations with Iran on a more positive trajectory. Three examples stand out.

In the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, Tehran offered to help Washington overthrow the Taliban and establish a new political order in Afghanistan. But in his 2002 State of the Union address, President Bush announced that Iran was part of an ''axis of evil,'' thereby scuttling any possibility of leveraging tactical cooperation over Afghanistan into a strategic opening.

In the spring of 2003, shortly before I left government, the Iranian Foreign Ministry sent Washington a detailed proposal for comprehensive negotiations to resolve bilateral differences. The document acknowledged that Iran would have to address concerns about its weapons programs and support for anti-Israeli terrorist organizations. It was presented as having support from all major players in Iran's power structure, including the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. A conversation I had shortly after leaving the government with a senior conservative Iranian official strongly suggested that this was the case. Unfortunately, the administration's response was to complain that the Swiss diplomats who passed the document from Tehran to Washington were out of line.

Finally, in October 2003, the Europeans got Iran to agree to suspend enrichment in order to pursue talks that might lead to an economic, nuclear and strategic deal. But the Bush administration refused to join the European initiative, ensuring that the talks failed.

Now Washington and its allies are faced with two unattractive options for dealing with the Iranian nuclear issue. They can refer the issue to the Security Council, but, at a time of tight energy markets, no one is interested in restricting Iranian oil sales. Other measures under discussion -- travel restrictions on Iranian officials, for example -- are likely to be imposed only ad hoc, with Russia and China as probable holdouts. They are in any case unlikely to sway Iranian decision-making, because unlike his predecessor, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad disdains being feted in European capitals.

Alternatively, the United States (or Israel) could strike militarily at Iran's nuclear installations. But these are spread across Iran, and planners may not know all of the targets that would need to be hit. Moreover, a strike could prove counterproductive by hardening Iranian resolve to acquire a nuclear weapons capacity.

Is there a way out of this strategic dead end? Nuclear diplomacy with Iran, never an easy proposition, has been made harder not only by poor policy choices in Washington, but also by trends in Iranian politics. Mr. Ahmadinejad's electoral victory last year against former President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani suggests that a significant number of Iranians linked Mr. Rafsanjani's call for rapprochement with the West with his corrupt past and rejected both in favor of Mr. Ahmadinejad's populist nationalism. Moreover, Mr. Ahmadinejad's execrable rhetoric about Israel and the Holocaust threatens to make future Western engagement look like appeasement.

These developments have severely circumscribed the possibilities for diplomacy between the United States and Iran. Iranian officials with ties to the Ayatollah Khamenei continue to stress in private conversations that key players on Iran's National Security Council -- the chief decision-making body for foreign policy -- remain interested in a strategic dialogue with Washington. But the popularly elected President Ahmadinejad could easily marshal resistance to any ''grand bargain'' with the United States. And absent a more positive strategic context, efforts to reopen discussions on a discrete issue of mutual interest, like Iraq, would at best only reprise the experience of short-lived tactical cooperation over Afghanistan.

Last week, the Saudi foreign minister, Saud al-Faisal, suggested a way out of this impasse -- one that might also help address other pressing challenges in the Persian Gulf. The Saudi prince noted that if Iranian nuclear weapons were deployed against Israel, they would kill Palestinians, and if they missed Israel, they would hit Arab countries. And so he urged Iran ''to accept the position that we have taken to make the Gulf, as part of the Middle East, nuclear free and free of weapons of mass destruction.''

While Prince Saud blamed Israel for starting a nuclear arms race in the Middle East, his implication that a nuclear-weapons-free Gulf might precede a regionwide nuclear-weapons-free zone is a nuanced departure from longstanding Arab insistence that regional arms control cannot begin without Israel's denuclearization. The United States and its partners should build on this idea and support the creation of a Gulf Security Council that would include Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and the other Arab states in the Gulf, as well as the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council.

The Gulf Security Council would not replace American alliances with traditional security partners, but it would operate alongside them, much as the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe has operated alongside NATO. The council would provide a framework under which the United States could guarantee that it would not use force to change Iran's borders or form of government, provided that Iran committed itself to regionally defined and monitored norms for nonproliferation (including a nuclear weapons ban), counterterrorism and human rights. States concerned about Iran's nuclear activities would then have new leverage to ensure Iranian compliance with these commitments. Additionally, pressing Iran to abide by standards defined and administered multilaterally might be more acceptable to China and Russia than pushing Iran to accept an American reinterpretation of its nonproliferation obligations.

Such a framework would leapfrog over proposals for establishing a ''contact group'' of Iraq's neighbors and offer all parts of the Iranian political spectrum -- even the hard-liners around Mr. Ahmadinejad -- something they want: recognition of Iran's leading regional role. Besides rejuvenating efforts to contain the Iranian nuclear threat, it could provide essential support for stabilization in Iraq, as the inclusion of Iran and Saudi Arabia would bring together the two states that could be most useful in brokering compromises between Shiite and Sunni communities there.

A diplomatic resolution of the Iranian nuclear problem is still within reach. But successful diplomacy will require a bold new vision. The next time the five permanent members of the Security Council convene to discuss Iran, perhaps they should meet in Riyadh rather than London.

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Copyright 2003 Gannett Company, Inc.
USA TODAY

May 12, 2003, Monday, FINAL EDITION

SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 1A

LENGTH: 592 words

HEADLINE: Iran, U.S. holding talks in Geneva

BYLINE: Barbara Slavin

BODY:
Iran's Islamic government is debating re-establishing diplomatic relations with the United States for the first time in 23 years and is holding secret talks with U.S. diplomats in Geneva on a range of issues, including the shape of a new government in Iraq, U.S. and Iranian diplomats say.

The Geneva discussions, due to resume next week, are headed on the U.S. side by Zalmay Khalilzad, President Bush's special envoy to Iraq and Afghanistan, the diplomats say. A representative of the United Nations opens the talks but does not always stay, U.S. officials say. There have been three meetings this year, the most recent on May 3.

The sessions, which grew out of earlier multilateral discussions on Afghanistan, are the sort of direct, high-level talks the United States has long sought with Iran, a regional power. Though U.S. diplomats meet with representatives of Iran's elected government, the talks have the explicit approval of Islamic clerics, who hold decision-making power over foreign policy.

The meetings come as debate heats up in the Bush administration over how to deal with a country that has considerable influence in Iraq, is said to be developing nuclear weapons and is a major supporter of Palestinian and Lebanese militant groups. Diplomats are discussing all these issues.

Diplomats did not say what results the talks have produced, but in a gesture toward Iran on Saturday, U.S. forces in Iraq began disarming the Mujahedin-e Khalq, an Iraq-based organization that violently opposes the Islamic government in Tehran. The White House is still taking a tough line in some public venues, though, asking the International Atomic Energy Agency to declare Iran in violation of its non-proliferation pledges after discovery of an Iranian program to enrich uranium for use in nuclear weapons.

Secretary of State Colin Powell confirmed the dialogue with Iran but said restoration of formal relations was not on the horizon.

"The issue of diplomatic relations is not on the table right now for either side," Powell said. "But in terms of communicating with the Iranians, we have such ways, and we use them on a regular basis."

Although it is proceeding with talks, the Bush administration is divided over how to approach Iran, which Bush included with Iraq and North Korea in his "axis of evil." Some officials see Iran as the next target for U.S.-backed regime change and are reluctant to shore up clerical rule there. Others regard contacts as necessary to restore stability in Iraq and make headway toward a Palestinian-Israeli peace agreement.

"The debate is taking place both in Iran and the United States," says an Iranian diplomat who asked not to be named. "We are ready to discuss re-establishing relations on the basis of mutual respect."

Last week, a majority of the Iranian parliament called for restoration of relations with the United States. Opinion polls show more than 70% of Iranians favor restoring ties cut by the United States in 1980 after Iranian students seized U.S. Embassy hostages.

Moderates within the regime have favored restoring relations but have been stymied by hard-line clerics. That dynamic may be changing, however, as a result of the U.S. toppling of governments in Iraq and Afghanistan, both of which border Iran.

Last month, after the fall of Baghdad, former president Hashemi Rafsanjani, who is close to the country's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, suggested holding a referendum on re-establishing ties with the United States.

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Copyright 2003 Gannett Company, Inc.
USA TODAY

May 22, 2003, Thursday, FIRST EDITION

SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 10A

LENGTH: 753 words

HEADLINE: Mutual terror accusations halt U.S.-Iran talks

BYLINE: Barbara Slavin

DATELINE: WASHINGTON

BODY:
WASHINGTON -- A fledgling dialogue between Iran and the United States has broken down over mutual accusations of support for terrorism, U.S. and Iranian officials said Wednesday.

White House officials confirmed a report in the Los Angeles Times that the United States had canceled a meeting scheduled in Geneva on Wednesday because of U.S. assertions that Iran is harboring al-Qaeda leaders implicated in suicide bombings in Saudi Arabia last week that killed 34 people, including eight Americans.

A senior Iranian diplomat denied the charges, however, and said the cancellation was mutual. He said Iran was angry over the U.S. failure to disarm an Iranian opposition group based in Iraq, the Mujahedin-e Khalq, that is on a U.S. State Department list of terrorist groups. "Our information is that you have not disarmed the Mujahedin, and it is the height of hypocrisy for the United States to be criticizing Iran, which has captured more al-Qaeda than any other country," said the diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

A State Department official, who also asked not to be named, said the opposition group was being forced to give up its weapons, although it was unclear what would happen to the group's 3,500 members. "We want the Iranians to fulfill their obligations concerning terrorism just as we do," he said.

A statement last weekend from U.S. Central Command in Kuwait said coalition forces had seized "2,139 tanks, armored personnel carriers, artillery pieces, air-defense artillery pieces and miscellaneous vehicles formerly in the possession" of the group and destroyed arms caches.

The State Department official said resumption of the U.S.-Iranian talks depends on Iran handing over al-Qaeda leaders, including Saif al-Adil, an Egyptian indicted for conspiracy in the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in East Africa.

"The presence of al-Qaeda operatives working from Iran is a matter of very serious concern to us," State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said Wednesday. "It's the responsibility of the government to prevent these kind of people from coming" to Iran.

Another U.S. official said it is unclear what role Adil played in recent bombings. He said Adil had been in Iran for several months.

Despite the lack of diplomatic relations between the two countries for more than two decades, senior Iranians and Americans have met three times in Geneva this year to discuss a range of important topics, including Iraq, Afghanistan and Iran's nuclear program. The talks, which grew out of United Nations-sponsored meetings on Afghanistan, were the sort of direct, authoritative discussions that the United States had sought with Iran's government for years. The last session occurred May 3; another session had been set for Wednesday.

But the bombings in the capital of Saudi Arabia, Riyadh, disrupted that schedule. "The Iranians received a strong message from the United States after the bombing in regard to individuals who may likely be involved," a senior White House official said Wednesday.

In Tehran, a government spokesman, Abdullah Ramezanzadeh, said the accusation that Iran has harbored al-Qaeda was "unfounded and undocumented."

The Bush administration sought talks with Iran, a major regional power, in part because of Iran's influence over Iraq's majority Shiite Muslim population. But the meetings, attended by White House Iraq envoy Zalmay Khalilzad and senior State Department officials, aroused controversy among hard-liners in both Iran and the USA who do not want to see an improvement in relations.

Geoffrey Kemp, a Middle East expert at The Nixon Center, said the contacts should be resumed because of the need to discuss vital issues that include Iraq, nuclear weapons and Iran's support for militant Palestinian and Lebanese groups that impede settlement of the Arab-Israeli conflict. "It behooves both governments to be imaginative and creative, because the costs of not working out their differences are very high for both," Kemp said.

Some U.S. officials see Iran as a target for regime change and have suggested using the Mujahedin-e Khalq as a vehicle for undermining Iran's unpopular fundamentalist government. The group was harbored for decades by Saddam Hussein's regime and was involved in assassinations of Iranian officials as well as anti-American terrorism in the 1970s. Most Iranians oppose the organization for having sided with Iraq during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war.

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Press Briefing on Board Plane En Route Moscow

Secretary Colin L. Powell
Moscow, Russia
December 9, 2001

SECRETARY POWELL: I’m distressed to learn there has been another suicide bomber. I cannot understand, I assume, I am not sure if Hamas is taking credit for it. But whether it’s Hamas or one of the other organizations, they need to understand that this leads nowhere. This does not lead to the end of violence, which will lead to negotiations to the settlement of this crisis. So I condemn this action and once again encourage both sides to do the necessary to put the violence down to zero. General Zinni has another security meeting scheduled for today for specific actions that both sides should take and I hope that both sides will respond positively to the meeting. I assume the meeting will take place.

QUESTION: Do you actually believe that Arafat is capable of cutting them off?

SECRETARY POWELL: I think that Chairman Arafat is capable of doing more than he has done so far and he has to deal with Hamas. Hamas is destroying his authority of credibility. He wants to look forward to a peace process and actions such as this are a direct attack against him as well as a direct attack against Israel and innocent civilians.

QUESTION: What are the sorts of prescriptions that Zinni is putting forward?

SECRETARY POWELL: We had a number of ideas over the past several months that have come out the Tenet report, that have come out of previous discussions, I don’t have the specifics with me but there are things that you can do locally to start to bring control of different areas. With Palestinian Security Forces taking responsibility of a particular location - Israelis moving back a little to see if it sticks or holds. And then you go from there. I think this is something that is going to have to be built; the cease-fire is going to have to be built area by area, and I’m of the view that you are not going to get a cease-fire everywhere all at once. You are going to have to go location-by-location, piece-by-piece and try to build this, if it’s going to be built at all like coral, one piece at a time coming out of the sea.

QUESTION: Mr. Secretary, with all due respect, you’ve been sending the same message to General Arafat that he has to do more, that he has to deal with Hamas, etc. Does he obviously doesn’t get it or can’t do it or he can’t do more? It doesn’t seem to be enough.

SECRETARY POWELL: I think he is getting it. He’s getting it now from everybody, from us, from the international community, from the Europeans and from the Arab leaders in the region. But the question is now, can he act on it, and he has authority to control those things that are under his control and he has to deal with those things that may not be under his control, and he has to bring under his control or do something to make them unable to conduct the kinds of attacks that they have been conducting. Otherwise, there will be no peace in this region. Yes, it is something I have been saying for months, but my view hasn’t changed. And if you look at the situation, and unless that kind of action is taken, I don’t know how to get moving. We’ve got to have some movement toward a cease-fire. Without a cease-fire we cannot get on the path that both sides need to be on. I’ve been saying this for almost ten and half months and see nothing to change my view or to change the objective facts there are. We have seen both sides pursuing courses of action that have not gained Israel any additional security and have not moved this toward a peace process. So it is important to keep driving home the simple fact that we have a plan, the Mitchell Plan, which will move us toward this direction and try to get a cease-fire. I think the burden is on Mr. Arafat to do more to get the violence down to zero.

QUESTION: Is there some fall back plan perhaps to ask other leaders in the region to take a more active role?

SECRETARY POWELL: I mentioned this to Arafat, but in previous interviews Mr. Arafat talked about the Palestinian leaders. There’s a leader for the Hamas, there’s a leader for all these organizations and all their responsibility for what is happening and all their responsibility to do something about it. That strategy on Hamas takes us nowhere. It does not achieve whatever political objectives we have in mind. All it does is kill youngsters, suicide bombers and innocent Israelis. So where does that take us? Where does that lead us? So it becomes a burden on the leaders of these organizations, as well as a burden on Arafat.

QUESTION: The question about the Moscow stop. You told us a couple of times during the course of this trip that there was a near agreement to move the Start I and II verification procedures to the new strategic framework. How can you do that without an arms control treaty Mr. President says he doesn’t want?

SECRETARY POWELL: What the President said at the Washington press conference, if my memory serves me correctly, is that the piece of paper is needed, we will do a piece of paper. We have to somehow as we move forward and as the Russians identify for us specifically and formally what their reductions will be, then what we don’t want to lose is the verification and notifications and other provisions of Start I and some of the provisions of Start II need to be taken forward. One of the things we discussed with Foreign Minister Ivanov and what we will be discussing is how to bring these features forward and to, we use a variety of words, to codify them, formalize them as the document in a way that both sides find satisfactory; we are still….

QUESTION: Do you expect to get a specific number from the Russians on all types of weapons on this trip?

SECRETARY POWELL: I don’t know; I’ll wait and see tonight and tomorrow. What they have said to us previously is that their number will be consistent with our number. So I expect it to be in the same range. Whether they pick the same range, pick a specific number, or expand their range a little bit, I do not know yet. But I’m of the view that it will be in that same general area.

QUESTION: The Iran pipeline question. I was curious what your response to him might have been one, if there had been one. And also what extent you brought this up in your meetings individually or in a larger meeting?

SECRETARY POWELL: We didn’t go into the specifics of pipelines and the details of CPCs or BTCs vs until Pat decided to share his extensive knowledge of all the pipelines. And so we talked in general terms about the potential that Kazakhstan has and I was particularly impressed with my conversation with the American Chambers this morning about the amount of money they are looking at investing in Kazakhstan. They were talking in the range of $200 billion over the next 5 or 10 years ahead because they see that kind of potential. To get that potential out, you’ve got to move it. You’ve got to move all that fuel, crude natural gas and so I heard the president carefully but I did not have a well-structured answer that I would have contributed at that point or now.

QUESTION: You had suggested in your earlier remarks that nothing had changed since September 11. What were you meaning to say by that?

SECRETARY POWELL: I just wanted to stick to the two major pipeline projects, the CPC and the BTC, and there is another one coming along. CPC just opened, Spence Abraham was just at the opening, and BTC is the subject of discussion and is coming along and I just wanted to hold the story right there.

QUESTION: On Iran?

SECRETARY POWELL: On Iran, setting aside pipelines. I am open to explore opportunities. We have been in discussions with the Iranians on a variety of levels and in some new ways since September 11. Jim Dobbins spoke with Iranians in Bonn as we put together the new interim administration in Afghanistan, and I had a brief handshake and discussion with the Iranian Prime Minister in the UN. So there are a number of things going on and we recognize the nature of that regime and we recognize that the Iranian people are starting to try to find a new way forward and we are open to exploring opportunities without having any vaseline in our eyes with respect to the nature of the government or the history of the past 22 years.

QUESTION: Can you tell us when you were last in Moscow and how you expect to find it post-September 11?

SECRETARY POWELL: I was last in Moscow, if my memory serves me correctly, at the Reagan Summit in 1988, some of you may be old enough to remember. I think that was my last visit to Moscow and am very anxious to see it again. It was still a city of wide-open streets, a few things going up about, and one of my staff just came back and wrote me a note and said you may remember the one McDonald’s that was there. You ought to see the place now. So I am very anxious to see Moscow - see what it’s like and get a sense of how this newfound opulence in Moscow will eventually trickle out to places, which are thousands of miles away from Moscow and have not yet been touched. And so I’m just very anxious to see the place. I hope I will have the time to walk around, though it may be unlikely.

QUESTION: Back to the Middle East. You said that the leaders of Hamas and other militant organizations need to realize their strategies. Do I understand you right to be appealing to the leaders of these organizations to get the violence down? If so, what reason do you have to believe they might actually do this and is it also in the sense of acknowledgement that Arafat himself doesn’t have the capacity to do what needs to be done to bring down the violence sufficiently?

SECRETARY POWELL: I’m not so much appealing to them as I am stating what is a fact. They will not push Israel into the sea. And so they will not be successful if that is their goal. Mr. Arafat has available to him tens of thousands of security personnel with weapons and this is a direct challenge to the peace process, to his party, to his ability to demonstrate that he is the leader of the Palestinian people and in the position to negotiate with the Israelis. And so, it is a simple statement of fact and the Palestinian people ought to be asking these leaders where does this lead us, where does this take us? And the answer is nowhere. It takes you to the wrong destination where you can’t get the state that you want to have and that you ought to have with this kind of activity on the part of organizations like Hamas is becoming a more distant vision.

QUESTION: You have a couple of stops this evening. One you are going to do an interview with Channels TV 6, as you know a lot of NTVers have gone over there and also you will be laying some flowers at the Pushkinskaya Metro. What message are you trying to send or your interview with TV6, and what’s your message or purpose for laying flowers? Is this showing solidarity with the Russians?

SECRETARY POWELL: It is showing solidarity with the Russians; it is showing that this kind of violence exists in many forms and it is not just to America but elsewhere. I thought it was a useful connection to make and the two television stations that I will be doing interviews on at a reasonable hour. I think you all heard me speak about free press and free media and my Jeffersonian views from time to time. And I’ll continue in that theme if the right questions are presented. But there is no statement coming from me. It will be an open interview session and I’ll see what they ask. I always endorse a free media.

QUESTION: The Pushkinskaya bombing is said by the Russians to be by Chechnyans. I was wondering if Chechnyan terrorism will come up extensively in your talks and could you tell us a little bit about what kind of different agenda you’ll have in your meetings with Ivanov and then with the President?

SECRETARY POWELL: In meetings with Ivanov and in meetings I have been in with President Putin and President Bush, whenever Chechnya comes up, it is a very emotional issue for the Russians. They believe they are under terrorist attack and there is apparently a terrorist element to the threat that they face. But we also tell them to work hard to find a political solution. President Putin has attempted to do that after September 11, as you recall the speech that he gave. And I’m sure it will come up and we will discuss it. With Foreign Minister Ivanov, tonight will be a mostly social evening, but I expect we’ll get into business as we usually do. I think this is number 16 in terms of meetings for those of you keeping score. So the conversations are very easy with Igor and I find them very stimulating. As far as Putin tomorrow, I suspect we’ll go through all the range of issues, strategic arms, Chechnya, but more importantly, the emerging relationship between Russia and the West. I’m sure we’ll have the chance to talk about NATO at 20, and the implications of that for the Russia-Western and Russia-US relationship.

QUESTION: Question about a statement you made when last we talked to you. You said that most things were in place with the strategic framework, except the defense thing still has problems. Could explain what you meant by that?

SECRETARY POWELL: There is still a difference of opinion on the defense piece, I mean the strategically defensive weapons were just about done, all we have to do is hear a number from them and then I talked about verification and other issues. We will be talking about non-proliferation activities as part of the strategic framework. Great concentration on transparency so both sides know what the other is doing. Exchange of information on various programs. But there still is this disagreement with respect to missile defense programs. Increasingly in the ABM Treaty constraints that the President feels we must do in order to get our missile defense systems and they continue to find the ABM Treaty to be at the center of the strategic framework. We haven’t been able to persuade them otherwise and they haven’t been able to persuade us otherwise. We haven’t been able to find to get through that by their accepting the testing we have to do. So I am here to see if there are any new ideas on this. Under Secretary Bolton was already in Russia this week talking with Mamedov and I am sure Igor and I and President Putin and I will have the chance to discuss it again tomorrow. But increasingly we are constrained by the treaty.

Released on December 10, 2001