US and Iran holding 'secret' talks on nuclear programme

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Thomas Pickering said the nuclear issue had been 'prominent' in the secret talks

By Anne Penketh, Diplomatic Editor
Monday, 14 April 2008

Iran
and the United States have been engaged in secret "back channel"
discussions for the past five years on Iran's nuclear programme and the
broader relationship between the two sworn enemies, The Independent can
reveal.

One of the participants, former senior US diplomat Thomas Pickering,
explained that a group of former American diplomats and experts had
been meeting with Iranian academics and policy advisers "in a lot of
different places, although not in the US or Iran".
"Some of the
Iranians were connected to official institutions inside Iran," he said
in a telephone interview from Washington. The group was organised by
the UN Association of the USA, a pro-UN organisation. Its work was
facilitated by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, a
government-funded think-tank chaired by the former chief UN weapons
inspector for Iraq, Rolf Ekeus.
While the nuclear issue was
"prominent", Mr Pickering said, "we discussed what's going on
domestically in both countries and wide-ranging issues" affecting the
US-Iran relationship. Although none of the group members was from the
US or Iranian governments, he said that "each side kept their officials
informed". The Bush administration "did not discourage us," he added.
Mr
Pickering declined to go into greater detail for fear of jeopardising
future meetings of the group of about a dozen Americans and Iranians,
although the number of participants varies. Back- channel talks have
often provided crucial impetus in solving the world's most intractable
disputes. They usually only become public in case of agreement, as seen
with Northern Ireland and the Oslo accords on the Middle East, or
failure, as in the case of an Israeli-Syrian informal channel.
The
revelation about the existence of an Iran-US back channel coincides
with the recent publication by three of its American members, including
Mr Pickering, of proposals aimed at overcoming the deadlock between
Iran and the West over Tehran's nuclear ambitions. The initiative
addresses the crunch issue of Iran's right to enrich uranium on its own
soil while providing guarantees that the nuclear fuel will not be
diverted for military purposes.
Mr Pickering spoke of a "rather
positive" reaction to the plan, which provides for an international
consortium to jointly manage and run uranium enrichment on Iranian soil.
However,
the Bush administration has not responded, and remains wedded to its
current policy of sanctions aimed at forcing Iran to halt uranium
enrichment in line with UN demands, while offering the opportunity to
enrich uranium outside the country through a Russian consortium. A
Foreign Office spokesman said Britain was "aware" of the proposals but
did not have an official response. The Iranian government, according to
Mr Pickering, has let it be known that "they would not respond unless
it was offered officially".
In arms-control circles the plan has
gained traction "because he's so respected," said George Perkovich of
the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, referring to Mr
Pickering, who is a former US undersecretary of state. The initiative,
co-signed by the UNA-USA president William Luers, a former diplomat,
and Jim Walsh, a nuclear expert from the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, was first aired at the end of February in The New York
Review of Books where it has generated further discussion.
Mr
Pickering says that he and his colleagues decided to act now because US
policy was "stuck", in the light of Iran's refusal to bow to the UN
demand to halt uranium enrichment, despite the imposition of economic
sanctions. Prospects for face-to-face US-Iran talks are therefore
blocked, he says, arguing that the case is urgent because Iran is
continuing to install centrifuges at its main enrichment plant in
Natanz.
But other experts point out that with the 3,000
centrifuges at Natanz spinning at only 20 percent of capacity because
of technical problems, there is time for the West to play a waiting
game.
James Acton, a nuclear specialist at King's College
London Department of War Studies, said the challenge would be to
prevent Iran obtaining a clandestine route to a nuclear weapon thanks
to the technical know-how that would be obtained from foreign partners.
Mr Pickering said: "It can be feasible if governments wish to
make it so, technically and financially. But it will take a lot of
negotiation."
Some analysts pointed out that a breakthrough was
unlikely so long as George Bush was in the White House and Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad holds the presidency of Iran, where elections are scheduled
for next year. "Why would Iran go for it now? They feel like they've
won, there are not enough sanctions, and there is no threat of war,"
said Mr Perkovich.
Calling Iran's bluff?
The
Luers-Pickering-Walsh initiative gives Iran the opportunity to prove
that its nuclear intentions are peaceful by yielding to the Iranians'
key demand for a uranium enrichment programme on Iranian soil. The
enrichment activities would take place under the supervision of a
jointly managed international consortium. The plan is the most detailed
of its kind since 2005. Conditions to be negotiated with Iran would
include:
*a UN Security Council resolution authorising the
arrangement and specifying that if Iran breaks the agreement, member
states would be authorised to take punitive action;
*Iran would
be barred from producing highly enriched uranium, which is weapons
grade fuel, or reprocessed plutonium, which can be an alternative route
to producing a bomb;
*Iran would implement the stringent inspection measures in the Additional Protocol to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty;
*Iran would commit itself to building only "safe" light-water reactors.