DAR AL HARB - U.S.A. - WASHINGTON D.C.: APPEASERS

No ‘crack’ on North Korea, Iran :US

WASHINGTON - After years of scolding North Korea, and a rising rhetorical drumbeat on Iran and Syria, the United States is set to confront its foes face-to-face in a sudden burst of diplomacy. But the administration of US President George W. Bush fiercely denies it has ditched its robust foreign policy and undergone a conversion on the road to Damascus, Teheran or Pyongyang.

After accusing Iran of boosting Iraqi militias and the dispatch of two aircraft-carrier groups to the Gulf, top US officials will join Iranian, Syrian and other regional envoys at just-scheduled talks on stabilising Iraq.

And following six years of decrying one-on-one talks with Pyongyang as a reward for bad behavior, a senior US negotiator will meet a North Korean official next week to start thawing Cold War relations under a landmark nuclear deal.

“This did not just happen overnight,” State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said Wednesday, playing down talk of a sudden breakthrough with two-thirds of the “axis of evil,” Bush’s 2002 characterization of Iraq, Iran and North Korea.

“This happened as a result of careful policy and diplomatic groundwork that has been laid over the course of years by this administration.

White House spokesman Tony Snow also ruled out a foreign policy flip-flop.

“There is no crack ... there will not be bilateral talks between the United States and Iran, or the United States and Syria, within the context of these meetings.”

“If you’re expecting, suddenly, new, chummy relations, you’ve created a scenario that is not justified by the facts on the ground.”

Those remarks appeared a step back from comments by a senior State Department official Tuesday who declined to rule out bilateral talks with Teheran on the issue of Iranian-made munitions allegedly being used against US troops in Iraq.

The Baghdad conference on March 10 will involve envoys from Iran, Jordan, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkey, Egypt, Bahrain, the Arab League and the Organisation of the Islamic Conference, along with the five UN Security Council powers — Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States.

A ministerial meeting will follow as early as mid-April, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Tuesday.

The meetings appear to closely resemble the call for a regional conference advocated by the independent Iraq Study Group in December, which the US administration first appeared to reject.

Snow argued US diplomats had attended multilateral meetings alongside Iranian counterparts for years, including Afghan reconstruction talks in 2002 and 2003 and an Iraqi Compact group meeting at the United Nations last year.

On another front, just two weeks after North Korea agreed to freeze its nuclear program, the State Department said Wednesday senior US diplomat Christopher Hill would meet in New York next week with Pyongyang’s Vice Foreign Minister Kim Kye-Gwan.

All that added up to a climbdown from the previous stance of no direct two-way meetings with the communist state, according to Bush’s critics.

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Shut up Tony, the White House cracked wide open...

APPEASEMENT IS THE NAME OF THE GAME, and no matter how much you say it isn't, it is...


Pertinent Links:

1) No ‘crack’ on North Korea, Iran :US