WASHINGTON, Feb 1: The US has compromised on its hard-line positions on both the Iranian nuclear dispute and the future of aid to Palestinians to broker deals on both the issues.
On US prodding, the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, who met this week in London, agreed to refer Iran to the UN Security Council but only after Washington dropped its demand for an immediate referral. Now the Security Council will wait until March to take up the Iran case.
On the Palestinian issue, Britain, China, France, Russia and the US endorsed the US demand that overseas aid will be conditioned on a new Hamas government renouncing violence and accepting Israel’s right to exist. The Palestinian Authority gets roughly half its annual budget of up to $1.9 billion from other governments and international organizations.
This was also less than an outright threat to boycott Hamas, as the US had originally demanded. However, administration officials said it was the strongest front possible given the different laws and policies that govern aid among different nations and international donor organizations.
Commenting on the move to refer Iran to the Security Council, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice acknowledged that it was a compromise between the US preference for immediate referral and action and the Russian preference to put off referral.
Observers in Washington say the US agreed to water down its original demand to ward off the pressure to delay the entire debate for a month or more.
The US has wanted to bring Iran before the Security Council for some time, a position backed in recent weeks by European nations but Russia and China continued to oppose it up to the London conference.
Russia and China are Iran’s traditional allies and trading partners and have been reluctant to escalate the standoff over what Tehran insists is a peaceful programme to develop nuclear power for electricity.
“We were prepared to be sensitive to their sense of timing of when this ought to be taken up in the Security Council,” said Ms Rice while explaining how Russia and China agreed to bring Iran to the council.
