By IRNA,
London : An American academic who advises the Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution on strategic policy has called on both the US and British governments to initiate high-level negotiations with Iran over its nuclear energy program.
“The US, and the UK for that matter, has yet to send any official representative of high standing,” government relations adviser, Michael Shank said Tuesday.
“In recent nuclear negotiations, David Miliband, the UK foreign secretary, sent his underlings while the US sent no one at all,” Shanks said in relation to the recent visit to Tehran led by EU High Representative Javier Solana to offer Iran a revised package.
In a letter to the Financial Times, he asked whether the US and UK had learned anything from recent high-levels initiatives that bore some success, regarding North Korea, Kenya and Myanmar.
His call comes after Britain’s former ambassador to Washington, Sir Christopher Meyer, urged US President George Bush last year to use his remaining time in office to open a serious dialogue with Iran to help stabilize Iraq and maybe fix the nuclear issue too.
Veteran US Democrat, Lee Hamilton, who co-chaired of the Iraq Study Group (ISG), has also said that the Bush Administration has not gone nearly far enough in trying to resolve its problems with Iran.
Some former statesmen have previously suggested that the US president should appoint a high-level envoy to Iran, with former president Jimmy Carter being mentioned among the likely candidates.
Shank also referred to the success of the ground-breaking initiatives by former president John Kennedy in engaging with Russia and by Richard Nixon in opening relations with China.
Of the most recent success, he said it was US ambassador Christopher Hill’s persistent diplomatic penetration of North Korea’s isolationism that “finally unearthed some tractable – and previously conflict-ridden-landscape.”
“Former UN secretary-general Kofi Annan’s eleventh-hour emergency engagement in Kenya brokered a post-election agreement between the government and opposition parties thought impossible amid the din of violence,” the adviser at George Mason University said.
He also referred to the current UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon “meetings with the obstinate military junta leadership in Myanmar that opened the door to critical aid deliveries.”