From a recent New York Post:
January 17, 2006 — TREATING Iran’s alleged nuclear ambition as a hot potato, the European trio of Britain, Germany and France has decided to pass it on to the International Atomic Energy Agency and thence to the United Nations’ Security Council. “Our talks with Iran have reached a dead end,” says Germany’s new Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier.
In truth, however, the trio’s three-year talks with Iran started at a dead end.
The talks began when Iran admitted that it had been lying to the International Atomic Energy Agency and violating the terms of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) for 18 years but promised not to do so again.
Legally speaking, Iran should have been referred to the Security Council at that time. But the Europeans rejected U.S. demands to that effect and decided to forgive Iran for its past sins — much as a deceived spouse might show magnanimity toward a sinning partner.
In exchange, they asked Iran — as then French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin put it — to give them “something with which to silence the Americans.”
De Villepin had devised the scheme as a means of exposing what he called “the follies of American policy”; Iran could be dealt with “the French way,” meaning negotiations and compromise rather than knuckle-rapping or worse.
The Iranians had good reason to welcome the European offer. It removed the serious-seeming threat of military action, while isolating the United States. And it gave Tehran time to speed up its nuclear program.
Read the entire article.
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