Iran to take center stage at UN assembly

Israeli, US envoys' will try to beat Russian opposition, cultivate support for 4th tough round of sanctions.

By ALLISON HOFFMAN, JPOST CORRESPONDENT, NEW YORK
ahmadinejad un 224 88 (photo credit: AP [file])
ahmadinejad un 224 88
(photo credit: AP [file])
Israeli officials and American Jewish leaders pressing for tougher sanctions against Iran at the United Nations' annual General Assembly opening this week will be competing with the distractions posed by the US financial meltdown and the diplomatic crisis in Georgia. Publicly, however, the Iran issue will be squarely in front of hundreds of world leaders passing in and out of UN headquarters. A large rally calling for immediate action against Iran's nuclear program is planned for Monday across the street in Dag Hammarskjold Plaza, and activists will stage other protests, from sidewalk demonstrations and e-mail petitions to public art exhibitions, throughout the week as Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad makes his way through Manhattan. Inside the building, Iran will almost certainly feature in formal addresses delivered by US President George Bush on Tuesday and President Shimon Peres on Wednesday. Yet in countless hotel suites and consular meeting rooms nearby, the focus for negotiators will simply be on keeping Israel's "number one issue" at the top of the agenda, rather than on achieving a momentous breakthrough agreement. The chief objective is cultivating support for a tough fourth sanctions resolution against Iran, something that has proved elusive for Jerusalem and Washington in part because of opposition from both China and Russia. But negotiators say they are also seeking unilateral assistance from countries with allied interests - for example, moves to block Chinese and Russian arms sales to Iran, or the export of refined gasoline into the country. "There's still a lot of room in the international community for action outside the UN," said David Harris, executive director of the American Jewish Committee, which has arranged audiences this year with officials from 70 different countries. "And the fact is that here we are, one year closer to the point of no return, and the international community has to find ways on diplomatic and economic fronts to do more," he said. But progress is painstaking, he acknowledged. "You don't conclude deals - this kind of diplomacy doesn't yield the clear outcomes people might like or seek in business," Harris said. "It's a process of accretion." For the Israeli delegation, that process includes expanding its points of contact with other diplomatic partners by broadening the scope of its whirlwind discussions beyond the crisis points of Iran, Lebanon and Syria. "We have in the past years promoted other facets of Israel 'beyond the conflict,'" said Daniel Carmon, Israel's deputy ambassador to the UN, referring to other, softer issues, from supporting scientific research to engaging with Africa and promoting women's rights, a central theme put forward by recently installed Ambassador Gabriela Shalev. "We feel that by being more present in this organization, by contributing to this positive agenda, we'll be benefiting in other spheres," Carmon told The Jerusalem Post. Yet Carmon said that at formal meetings happening alongside the General Assembly speeches, including a high-level Security Council parley on Tuesday, the focus will be on Iran. "Since the political issues are on the table, I think we definitely want to share with the world the way we see the Iranian danger," he said. Envoys from the Security Council's five permanent members - Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States - and Germany met Friday in Washington to discuss new sanctions but failed to reach consensus after a report last week from the UN's nuclear watchdog, the IAEA, found Iran is blocking a probe into allegations it tried to make nuclear weapons. Russia made clear Saturday that it opposes a Western push for new sanctions against Iran over its nuclear program, stressing the need to draw Teheran into "constructive dialogue," a Russian Foreign Ministry statement said. "In this context we spoke out against the development at this time of new measures along UN Security Council lines." Russia agreed to three previous rounds of UN sanctions, but along with China slowed down their passage and ensured they were less punitive than measures the US was seeking. Teheran has so far rejected a package of incentives offered by the six countries and the European Union to halt uranium enrichment, with Ahmadinejad scoffing at the offer. "Let them put sanctions on us," he blustered last week. That defiance has increased the conviction in some quarters that the talk of intermediate action merely delays the inevitable choice between either letting Iran do what it wants or using military action to stop it. "The big question is, 'So what?'" said Michael Oren, an expert in Middle Eastern diplomacy and military history. "There's nothing you can do to incentivize or disincentivize them." Other experts disagreed, arguing the problem lay in finding the right set of incentives. "Pro-Israel forces have done an excellent job in making their case over the past few years, so it's not for want of making it better that they haven't succeeded in stopping Iran," said John Mearsheimer, the University of Chicago political scientist who has criticized America's pro-Israel lobby for pushing the US into pre-emptive war with Iraq. One avenue, as Harris pointed out, is in reaching out to as many countries as possible: A recent survey by the Pew Global Attitudes Project found widespread negative views on Iran from an array of countries, and particular distrust in Muslim nations from Lebanon to Egypt and Jordan in Ahmadinejad's ability to make good decisions. "You listen carefully, you frame your case, you meet, you meet a second time, you meet a third time, you see the foreign minister, the ambassador, the prime minister," said Harris. "You can't just walk away and give up." AP contributed to this report