Analysis

U.S., IRAN FACE OFF IN MUNICH
By Martin Sieff

United Press International
February 11, 2005

http://www.wpherald.com/storyview.php?StoryID=20050211-021353-9638r

MUNICH -- Diplomatic fireworks may light up Bavaria this weekend with Pentagon hawks and Iran's deputy foreign minister attending the 41st Munich Security Conference.

The Security Conference, or Wehrkunde, has functioned for more than four decades as one of the most crucial bridges linking U.S. and Western European political leaders. However, over the past half decade it has changed and expanded dramatically. It now ranks as one of the world's premier diplomatic gatherings on international security affairs.

This year's meeting is no exception with Defense Minister Sergei Invaov, a regular participant, leading a strong Russian delegation, and with India's national security adviser, R.K. Narayanan, Israel's national security adviser, Giora Eiland, and Tatsuo Arima, the special envoy of the government of Japan, also present. Only the Chinese appear to be absent from the usual major heavy-hitting delegations.

U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld decided not to go -- aware that he might have faced embarrassing legal complications from a law suit an American human rights group has filed against him in a German court over the Abu Ghraib abuses. Although the German prosector said Thursday he would not pursue the case, the U.S. delegation this year is being led by Rumsfeld's equally high-profile and controversial deputy, Paul Wolfowitz.

The U.S. delegation to the Wehrkunde has traditionally been bipartisan and this year the most prominent Democrat attending is Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York. Her presence is bound to fuel speculation that she is focusing on strengthening her security credentials and diplomatic experience to prepare for a run for the presidency when President George W. Bush steps down after two terms in four years time.

But the U.S. delegation overall reflects the still unapologetic and take no prisoners, confident, hawkish confrontationists who pushed for the toppling of President Saddam Hussein in Iraq and who are now leading the calls for a tough line against the Islamic Republic of Iran and its nuclear weapons program.

Wolfowitz is accompanied by, among others, Democratic Sen. Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut who gave crucial bipartisan support to the drive to topple Saddam. The U.S. delegation also includes Max Boot of the Council on Foreign Relations, columnist David Brooks of the New York Times and Jim Hoagland of the Washington Post, Eliot Cohen of the School for Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University and Jeffrey Gedmen, director of the Aspen Institute in Berlin.

All of which makes the presence of the most senior Middle East diplomat present all the more intriguing. Most Arab countries are effectively boycotting the Wehrkunde this year. There are no Saudis at all among the list of participants issued to the press. Egypt and Pakistan are only sending ambassadors. But Iran is sending its deputy foreign minister for international and legal affairs, Gholamali Khoshroo.

Europe is now more important than ever before to the Iranians. They have agreed to negotiate with Britain, France and Germany, the so-called EU3, to come up with a way of satisfying international concerns about their nuclear development program. So far, the talks have led to no substantive breakthrough and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, in fact, alarmed Europeans this week during her first visit to the continent in her new position by signaling that U.S. patience with the negotiations was not limitless and time was running out for their diplomatic track.

The Iranians, therefore, have every reason to make their case forcefully to the European nations at the *Wehrkunde* this weekend. Their ties with Europe remain their best hope against becoming diplomatically and strategically isolated and then vulnerable to a U.S. military strike against their nuclear program. Some Iranians even fear the United States may try and topple the government of the Islamic republic itself.

But there are powerful forces deployed against the Iranians in Munich this weekend.

Israeli national security adviser Eiland can be guaranteed to keep quietly making his government's case that an Iranian nuclear bomb would pose an unacceptable and potentially annihilating threat to his country, and the heavy weighting of the U.S. delegation with neo-conservatives and Middle East policy hawks guarantees him a sympathetic hearing.

That means the Wehrkunde, a venue that has been dedicated for so long to strengthening trans-Atlantic ties, could see them significantly weakened this weekend.

Ironically, the Bush administration and the Europeans have both been trying in recent weeks to rebuild the ties that were so badly strained by their clashes over Iran. Just this week, Rice gave some ground to European pressure to lift a strict arms sales embargo against China, potentially opening the way for European companies to make highly lucrative deals there. And only a few weeks ago U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick in his last achievement before moving over to the State Department as Rice's No. 2 defused a potentially destructive row with the Europeans over their subsidies for the Airbus project that competes with America's Boeing airliners.

But now, European unease over Rice's uncompromising line on Iran signals that this new spirit of accord may be undercut even before President Bush pays his much anticipated visit to Europe. The Wehrkunde will be scrutinized even more closely than usual for omens this weekend to see how it will go.