As U.S. Plots Iran Strategy, Envoy’s Visit Hints at a Thaw

By MARK LANDLER and STEVEN ERLANGER
Published: September 30, 2009
WASHINGTON — As the United States and Iran prepared for critical talks over Tehran’s nuclear program, the Iranian foreign minister arrived quietly in Washington on Wednesday to visit the unofficial embassy here, the first visit to the capital by an Iranian of that rank in a decade.

While there were no plans for the minister, Manouchehr Mottaki, to meet with any American officials, his curiously timed visit, which was approved by the Obama administration, may help thaw the atmosphere as the administration puts its policy of engagement with Iran to the test.
The State Department said Mr. Mottaki asked for permission to visit the staff at Iran’s interest section, a diplomatic outpost Iran maintains in the Pakistani Embassy, since it does not have relations with the United States. The last time an Iranian foreign minister was permitted to make such a visit was in the late 1990s, during the Clinton administration.
“It is an unusual coincidence; whether it’s a happy coincidence, we’ll see tomorrow,” said Philip J. Crowley, a State Department spokesman. “It doesn’t make the serious issues we confront any easier, but if it’s taken as a small gesture and contributes in some way, that will be terrific.”
With tensions over Iran’s nuclear ambitions on the rise, diplomats are to meet in Geneva Thursday in a secluded, 18th-century villa. The United States and five other countries were preparing to press Iran for “practical, tangible” steps to show its willingness to negotiate, a senior American official said.
Among those would be “full and unfettered access” for inspectors to Iran’s uranium enrichment plant near the holy city of Qum, which the United States and its allies made public in an announcement last Friday.
“What we need to see now are not just words but actions,” said a senior official, who insisted on anonymity because he did not want to speak publicly before the meeting. “That needs to be the beginning of what the Iranians are required to do — to come clean about their entire nuclear program.”
The United States, which will be joined at the table by Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China, is likely to offer Iran a repackaged version of something it has offered before: an agreement to hold off on new sanctions if the Iranians agree to freeze their enrichment of uranium.
The proposal did not interest the Iranians before. But officials plan to try again, hoping that a new American administration, the pressure from disclosure of the nuclear enrichment complex, and internal divisions from Iran’s chaotic elections will make it more acceptable, American and European officials said.
“The point is to try to make it impossible for them to say no,” a European diplomat said.
France or Russia, officials said, is likely to put another familiar inducement on the table: a plan to supply Iran with nuclear fuel, which it could use to operate its nuclear reactors under international monitoring.
Such an agreement, which would be policed by the International Atomic Energy Agency, would give Iran a guaranteed source of enriched uranium for civilian energy needs but remove the fear that Iran would enrich uranium to the weapons-grade level needed for a nuclear bomb.
For its part, officials and experts said, Iran is likely to turn up with a narrow agenda on its nuclear program, but a host of other issues, including overhauling the United Nations; giving greater voice to non-Western countries; and universal nuclear disarmament. It laid these out in a five-page proposal last month, which was met with derision by Obama administration officials.
Iran is also likely to argue that it was not legally obliged to disclose its second enrichment plant, the one whose existence was made public last week. That contention will hinge on its “safeguards agreement” with the atomic agency, which originally said Iran was not required to disclose the plant until 180 days before it put fuel into it.
The agreement was later modified to require Iran’s disclosure as soon as it decided to build the complex. Iranian officials contend that Parliament never ratified the modification — an argument that the atomic energy agency’s director general, Mohamed ElBaradei, has rejected.
“They have been on the wrong side of the law,” said Dr. ElBaradei, who is normally circumspect.
In Tehran on Wednesday, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Iran would be willing to buy enriched uranium “from whomever will sell it to us” — suggesting a possible willingness to compromise on the issue of enrichment. A senior American official said the international community would consider such a proposal, saying it wanted “tangible steps” in its negotiations with Iran.
The United States will be represented by the under secretary of state for political affairs, William J. Burns, and Iran by its chief nuclear negotiator, Saeed Jalili. Mr. Jalili’s direct counterpart is Javier Solana, the European Union foreign policy chief, who is the host of the meeting.
Mr. Burns, a low-key career diplomat with a long history in the Middle East, attended a similar meeting with Iran in July 2008 during the Bush administration. His presence was considered a gesture, but he had instructions not to negotiate and he said little.
On Thursday, Mr. Burns will be a full participant, officials said, and they strongly suggested that the talks could include a one-on-one meeting on the sidelines between Mr. Burns and Mr. Jalili.
Mr. Jalili said that he was heading for the talks with a “positive approach,” while Iran’s atomic energy chief, Ali Akbar Salehi, said Iran was ready to discuss concerns about its new enrichment plant.
He said that Iran would soon offer a timetable for inspection of the Qum complex and that Iran would “try to resolve the issue both politically and technically” by engaging with the six countries in Geneva and the atomic energy agency. But Iran would continue to insist on its right to enrich uranium, he said.
“We will not discuss about our rights” to enrich uranium, he said Tuesday in Tehran. “But we are ready to discuss about nuclear disarmament and nonproliferation.”
In Washington, diplomats buzzed about Mr. Mottaki’s visit. He spent Wednesday afternoon in the interest section, a nondescript office block near Georgetown. Outside were Middle East TV crews, diplomatic security officers in black S.U.V.’s, and two federal agents wearing desert camouflage and armed with M-16s. A worker denied a reporter’s request for entry.
Some Iran experts said the visit was a coup for Mr. Ahmadinejad’s government. But they worried that the United States could send the wrong message to the Iranian people. “In Iran’s conspiratorial political culture, this will be seen by many people as a U.S. effort to ‘cut a deal’ with the regime at their expense,” said Karim Sadjadpour, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Mark Landler reported from Washington, and Steven Erlanger from Geneva. Helene Cooper contributed reporting from Washington.