[Peace-discuss] Fwd: American Friends Service Committee continues work on Iran

Mon May 7 23:45:28 CDT 2007

EXACTLY!! Reminds me of a school social worker whose idea of counseling was that if the kids behaved themselves and followed the rules, he would hang out w/ them as a reward! 

  I can't BELIEVE we're the only ones who get this.

  Jenifer

   Barbara kessel <barkes at gmail.com> wrote:
  The Quakers and Catholics (and Mennonites, though not mentioned here
in the article sent outt by Quakers below) are all in there pitching
inside of Iran and pushing on American govt. to talk to Iran.
The first point to our campaign in AWARE has been "let's not attack
Iran." The second point needs to be brought to the forefront now -
TALK TO IRAN. Please note the absurdity of Rice's idea of "diplomacy."
it is a reward for doing what we want you to do. We won't talk to you
about X until you do it and then we will talk to you and negotiate
after you have done what we want. Barbara Kessel

ah---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Sharon Haworth 
Date: May 6, 2007 4:32 PM
Subject: AFSC continues work on Iran
To:

The exchange below of April 18, 2007 between Geri Sicola, Director of
International Programs at AFSC, and Condelezza Rice may be of interest to
IYM Friends. The dialogue took place in Washington, DC and was arranged by
InterAction, a coalition of international humanitarian and development aid
organizations. I am very excited about the work AFSC is leading to push
for dialogue between Iran and the US and ask that we all hold world
policymakers in the Light at this critical time.

Sandra Tamari

QUESTION: Thank you, Madame Secretary. I'm Geri Sicola with the American
Friends Service Committee Quaker organization. You've got Quakers and
Catholics at this table. It's a very dangerous mix. (Laughter.)

First of all, I'm enormously encouraged by your recognition of the
importance of dealing with poverty and development as well as the fact that
sometimes, U.S. policy has possibly undermined peace and stability in
certain places. I and my boss were recently part of a delegation of
representatives of religious communities to Iran. We were the first
delegation of Americans to be invited by and to meet with the president
since the revolution. As you might imagine, it was a profound and awesome
experience.

My question -- and you might wonder why does this kind of a question come
from a group like ours that are involved in relief and development. And I'm
reminded of an African saying that when two elephants fight, it's the grass
that suffers, and we in this room are often the ones who have to clean up
when the grass suffers. My question really is about the basic philosophy,
now that you are in the State Department, of what we mean by diplomacy.

I wonder how we can resolve conflict peacefully when we are not in official
negotiation and dialogue with those with whom we differ. And your thoughts
on how we might get to the table of dialogue and conversation to prevent
another disaster. Thank you.

SECRETARY RICE: Well, sometimes it is possible to move international
politics forward by diplomacy and dialogue, and sometimes it isn't.
Sometimes, for instance, and I'm -- you may not agree, but in Afghanistan
and Iraq, I don't think they were options after many years. The Taliban was
not open to dialogue and diplomacy.

My own view is that after 12 years of defying the international community,
Saddam Hussein's regime was not open to dialogue and diplomacy. But that
doesn't mean that there aren't cases with people with whom you disagree
that dialogue and diplomacy might work. And you should always be looking
for those opportunities.

But the way that I think about how one conducts diplomacy is that it isn't
just a matter of talking; it isn't just a matter of dialogue. It is really
a matter of aligning your interests with the other parties' interests to
see if you can find common ground. And sometimes in order to do that, there
have to be certain principles in place that are understood, certain actions
have to have been taken, certain groundwork has to have been laid, and you
sometimes need others in order to help align those interests.

So let me give you an example of where I think we've gotten the alignment
to a place that we might be able now, through dialogue and diplomacy, to
make progress: North Korea. The North Korean nuclear program has now become
an issue not just with the United States, but also for all of North Korea's
neighbors. With the right countries at the table to bring to bear the right
sets of incentives and disincentives so that when people talk, there is
some chance that it might move forward. And so diplomacy has to have an
underlying infrastructure, an underlying set of incentives and
disincentives if you're going to make progress. That's really what we mean
by negotiation.

Now with Iran, I would like nothing better -- as a matter of fact, I stood
in the State Department at the end of May and I said the United States is
prepared to reverse 27 years of policy of not talking to Iran and I will
meet my counterpart anyplace, anytime, anywhere. But there is one
international condition that has been established that needs to be met. And
that is that Iran should cease its reprocessing and enrichment activities
because the problem with allowing that to just continue while we talk is
that the state gets better and better at doing it and therefore, gains more
and more capability and potential to develop a nuclear weapon.

And it's not our condition. It was the condition of the Europeans, it's the
condition of the Security Council, it's the condition of the IAEA. And so I
have been asking myself the question not why won't we talk to Tehran, but
why doesn't Tehran want to talk to us? Because meeting just that one
international condition would bring Iran and the United States into
face-to-face contact to talk about whatever is on their mind and whatever
is on our mind. We have not limited it. We've said we'll talk about anything.

Now we don't -- we're not cut off increasingly from the Iranian people. One
thing that we've tried to do is to make very clear that whatever
differences we have with the Iranian Government, we don't have differences
with Iranian people and their great culture and their desire to be
recognized for that great culture. I don't know if you know; we've had
several exchanges of people to Iran and Iranian people here. American
wrestlers were in Iran, and by the way, got standing ovations wherever they
went. The Iranian disaster relief professionals were here in the United
States. We've had people from their equivalent of the Centers for Disease
Control in Atlanta.

And so we're trying to open up those channels, but when governments talk,
it's not enough just to talk. It is important to have some way of gauging
the ability to come to some common ground or actually, the result can be
worse. And so I look forward to the day when I can sit in with my European
colleagues, the Russians, the Chinese and my Iranian counterpart and see if
we can find common ground on a civil nuclear program for Iran that would
not carry with it the risk of the creation of a nuclear weapon.

Thank you very much. I appreciate very much being with you.
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