Translated material
The thunderstorm bypassed the UN jungle
Bush and Ahmadinejad share a lunch break
Yesterday, US President George W. Bush and his Iranian counterpart Mahmoud Ahmadinejad spoke from the rostrum of the 61st session of the UN General Assembly that opened in New York. But this happened at meetings separated by a lunch break. There was no personal meeting between the presidents.They did not get closer in politics either. Bush, in his speech, did not argue with Ahmadinejad over Iran’s nuclear program, addressing directly the Iranian people: “The main obstacle to your future is that your rulers have decided to deprive you of your freedom and use your country’s resources to finance terrorism, fuel extremism and create nuclear weapons." The US President expressed his belief that the day will come when Iranians "will be able to live in freedom, and America and Iran will be good friends and close partners in ensuring peace." Such statements clearly do not contribute to compromise between Washington and Tehran.
At the UN headquarters, yesterday was awaited with caution. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has long dreamed of holding a direct debate with George Bush, but their political squabble would violate the strict rules of the General Assembly. Even before the opening of the session, which will last until September 29, UN Deputy Secretary-General Mark Malloch-Brown called on everyone to remain calm. “I'm sure both leaders will have special people working hard to keep them at a distance from each other. Therefore, most likely the great clash of the titans, the thunderstorm in the jungle - or whatever you want to call it - will not happen,” he told reporters. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice confirmed that US-Iranian negotiations can begin only after Tehran suspends uranium enrichment and processing.
However, French President Jacques Chirac spoke in favor of negotiations with Iran and against sanctions. “I don’t believe in a solution without dialogue. I have never seen sanctions being very effective,” he said. Paris already agrees that Iran should announce the suspension of uranium enrichment not before the negotiations, but directly during them. For their part, the members of the Six (Russia, the USA, China, Great Britain, France and Germany) could freeze the discussion of the Iranian nuclear dossier in the UN Security Council for the same period.
Nina Mamedova, head of the Iranian sector at the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, believes that Iran “may agree to a temporary cessation of work in the field of uranium enrichment, and Europe needs to agree to this.” In a conversation with Vremya Novostey, she suggested that “at first, the suspension of enrichment will be short-lived - for one or two months. But negotiations can last indefinitely, and during the dialogue both Iran and the Six will voice new proposals.” According to the expert, in this case, “the Americans will save face, because they will be able to say that it was they who obtained from Tehran a temporary cessation of work with uranium.”
The Iranian president is looking for contacts with the West, as evidenced by his reaction to the scandal surrounding the Pope, who last week, during a lecture in Germany, quoted the statement of one of the Byzantine emperors that the Prophet Muhammad, with his idea of a “holy war,” brought into the world “evil and inhuman." On Sunday, Benedict XVI sought to calm rising passions in the Islamic world, saying that "the quotation from a medieval text in no way expresses" his own views. Nevertheless, Iran's spiritual leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei called the Pope's remarks "the last link" in the "secret chain leading to the unleashing of a crusade" against Islam. However, yesterday Mahmoud Ahmadinejad suddenly announced that he accepted the Pope's apology, because the latter's words “were misinterpreted.” According to Nina Mamedova, this was “a clear signal to the world community that the Iranian regime is quite predictable, and if it is treated diplomatically and correctly, it will meet halfway.”