ON July 27 in New York, the vice foreign minister of North Korea, Kim Kye-gwan, called for a peace treaty with the US to formally end the Korean War (1950-53). With North Korea and Iran, the US has concentrated on their nuclear programmes while they sought assurances of security.
States acquire nuclear weapons to deter aggression. The minister significantly explained that the treaty would go a long way towards resolving the deadlock over Pyongyang’s pursuit of nuclear weapons.
Iran provides an identical parallel. In 2005 the then DG of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Dr Mohamed ElBaradei, told an American writer, that what Tehran sought was a grand bargain — concession on the nuclear issue against normalisation of relations based on assurances of security. “The prize they seek, above all, is better relations with the US.”
That holds good still. On July 22, Iran’s Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi said: “We have not ruled out establishing relations with other countries barring the Zionist regime [Israel], but it is possible that our relations are in an unusual situation with countries like the US. If one day the US agrees to a dialogue on an equal footing and without preconditions, while respecting the rights of our people, the situation will be different.”
However, for decades, irrespective of who held the tenancy of the White House, the US has adopted a culture of unilateralism, spurning diplomacy. Negotiations are meaningful only when there is a will to accept a compromise which recognises the interests of others.
Two countries were laid waste precisely because the US rebuffed overtures for a settlement, Afghanistan and Iraq, while a third, Libya, is meeting the same fate today. The revealing memoir of the distinguished Pakistani diplomat S. Iftikhar Murshed, entitled Afghanistan: The Taliban Years, plus the documents published by the National Security Archive in Washington D.C.
show that even after 9/11 the Taliban sought furiously to strike a deal with the US based on the ouster of Osama bin Laden.
In October 2001, the Taliban’s foreign minister Mullah Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil came to Islamabad “to suggest cessation of US military action to enable the Taliban leaders to persuade Mullah Omar to hand over Osama”. A decade later the US is engaged in talks with Taliban in sheer desperation, from a position of weakness.
On the eve of the US attack on Iraq, then president Saddam Hussein offered surrender terms. James Risen, a correspondent of high repute, reported (International Herald Tribune, Nov 7, 2003) the offer covered “US oil concessions”; “full support for any US plan” on Palestine, “first priority” on oil and mining rights; “direct US involvement on the ground in disarming Iraq”, including entry of 2,000 FBI agents; cooperation against terrorism and respect for American’s strategic interests in the region. It was rejected. Iraq’s devastation followed inexorably.
It astonishes one to recall today Iran’s written proposals to the US on March 23, 2003. The document was in three parts; one listed “Iranian aims” another “US aims”, the last listing precisely the sequential “steps” towards accord. In an amplification of the original US offer, Iran agreed to take “decisive action against any terrorists (above all Al Qaeda) on Iranian territory”; exchange of information; support for “political stabilisation” in Iraq; “stop of [sic] any material support to Palestinianopposition groups (Hamas, Jihad etc.) from Iranian territory, pressure on these organisations to stop violence against civilians within the borders of 1967”; “action on Hezbollah to become a mere political organisation within Lebanon” andacceptance of the Saudi initiative on Palestine, the two-state formula.
Iran sought, reciprocally, removal of sanctions, end to America’s hostile behaviour and to its support to “anti-Iranian terrorists”; “full access to peaceful nuclear technology” and “recognition of Iran’s legitimate security interest in the region”.
Three working groups were to be set up for “three parallel road maps” with an agreed “timetable for implementation”.
The document was prepared by Sadegh Kharrazi, nephew of the foreign minister and ambassador to France, and Javad Zarif, ambassador to the UN. It was endorsed by Ayatollah Ali Khomeini and conveyed to the State Department by Tim Guldimann, Swiss ambassador to Iran, by a letter of May 4, 2003 during a visit to Washington D.C.
But the national security adviser Condoleezza Rice said, “We’re going to fix the Middle East the way we fixed Europe after World War II”. Vice president Dick Cheney and defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld said, “We don’t speak to evil”. Secretary of state Colin Powell was ignored. His chief of staff Lawrence Wilkerson lamented “The secret cabal got what it wanted: no negotiation with Iran”. Worse still, Guldimann was scolded for his pains.
The offer that was made to Iran later omitted the assurance that the US would not attack Iran. It was fear of aggression — especially after Afghanistan and Iraq — that had prodded Iran to acquire a nuclear option. Had its proposal been accepted the situation in the entire region would have altered radically. Iran’s support is vital to the success of the peace process in Afghanistan. How does the United States seek to secure it? On Libya every offer of a compromise has been spurned as carnage proceeds apart.
Diplomacy is not a clash between good and evil. It is an exercise in reconciliation of divergent interests based on recognition of others’ interests. Dialogue is not a reward for good behaviour but a means by which behaviour can be changed. The US rejects diplomacy unless the circumstances force it to negotiate — as on Afghanistan — to enable it to quit without loss of face.
But its first preference is use of force, economic — and when it fails — military. It is the Third World that has suffered from America’s disavowal of the age-old tools of diplomacy and compromise. So, of course has the world body, the United Nations.
The writer is an author and a lawyer.