Published on Wednesday, August 23, 2006 by the Inter Press Service
Bush Ensured Iran Offer Would Be Rejected
by Gareth Porter
Even before Iran gave its formal counter-offer to ambassadors of the P5+1 countries (the U.S., Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China) Tuesday, the George W. Bush administration had already begun the process of organising sanctions against Iran.
Washington had already held a conference call on sanctions Sunday with French, German and British officials, the Washington Post reported.
Thus ends what appeared on the surface to be a genuine multilateral initiative for negotiations with Iran on the terms under which it would give up its nuclear programme. But the history of that P5+1 proposal shows that the Bush administration was determined from the beginning that it would fail, so that could bring to a halt a multilateral diplomacy on Iran's nuclear programme that the hard-liners in the administration had always found a hindrance to their policy.
Britain, France and Germany, which had begun negotiations with Tehran on the nuclear issue in October 2003, had concluded very early on that Iran's security concerns would have to be central to any agreement. It is has been generally forgotten that the Nov. 14, 2004 Paris Agreement between the EU and Iran included an assurance by the three European states that the "long-term agreement" they pledged to reach would "provide...firm commitments on security issues."
The European three had tried in vain to get the Bush administration to support their diplomatic efforts with Tehran by authorising the inclusion of security guarantees in a proposal they were working on last summer. In a joint press conference with U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in July 2005, French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy referred to the need to "make sure...that we discuss with
the security of their country. And for this, we shall need the United States..."
The complete article is at: http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0823-03.htm