American Ambassador Crocker "agrees broadly" with Genocidal Theocracy

Ambassador Ryan Crocker said “Trilateral Mechanism” three times during the press conference following his “positive” meeting with Iran this morning.

Made me wonder just what a “Trilateral Mechanism” is, and where the term originated….

BEHOLD!

I. Introduction

This Trilateral Action Plan for Israeli-Palestinian Roadmap Phase I

Implementation complements the Baker Institute's Israeli-Palestinian Working Group Policy Paper of February 2005.

It is focused on what needs to be done following the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and part of the Northern West Bank and during the upcoming period when the Israelis and Palestinians are preparing for elections, which should conclude in the spring of 2006.

It is our hope that decision makers, under current political circumstances, will take these suggestions under serious consideration in order to secure Phase I implementation of the Roadmap and to then launch consultations with the parties, under United States leadership and within the framework of the Quartet, on Phase II and III implementation of the Roadmap.

A separate Baker Institute Report will be prepared in the spring of 2006 on this issue by the

Baker Institute's Rabin Fellow, Dr. Yair Hirschfeld.

(A prominent academic in Israel, Dr. Hirschfeld was a key architect of the Oslo Accords in 1993 -bz)

FULL REPORT (PDF)

Welcome to Baker Street!

BTW here's the money quote from that report:

2. The creation of a Joint Operation Room to facilitate the resumption of security coordination on the local level and create a trilateral mechanism to prevent Israeli action in Jenin and other regions that might jeopardize public legitimacy for the PA

BACKGROUND:

Ryan Crocker ~ From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Ryan Crocker / Connections

Ryan C. Crocker ~ Short Carreer Bio

Oh, LOOK.

He went "native Bedouin" back in the day. How Lawrence of Arabia.

I'll bet he has a swell anti-war scarf from Urban Outfitters stashed somewhere in his closet.

WASHINGTON, Jan. 5 — When Ryan C. Crocker was trying to improve his Arabic in the late 1970s, he traveled to Jordan, made contact with a desert tribe and settled in for some hands-on training a little different from the standard State Department regimen.

“He wound up being a shepherd for a week or two, chasing down stray sheep and living with the Bedouin,” said Frederic C. Hof, a retired Army officer and author on the Middle East who recalls reading Mr. Crocker’s official report on the trip when they were in language training

[SNIP]

SOURCE LINK

I want you to pay very close attention to the language in this piece and I will insert links as I merit valuable:

U.S.: Broad agreement with Iran about Iraq

U.S. envoy says Iran must end support for militants

BAGHDAD - The United States ambassador in Baghdad said he and his Iranian counterpart agreed broadly on policy toward Iraq during four-hour groundbreaking talks on Monday, but insisted that Iran end its support for militants.

During a meeting that U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker described as businesslike and focused solely on Iraq,

BECAUSE THEY DIRECTED US EXPLICITLY AS TO WHAT WE CAN AND CAN NOT SAY IN ADVANCE

the American said Iran proposed setting up a “trilateral security mechanism” that would include the U.S., Iraq and Iran. Crocker said the proposal would need study in Washington.The U.S. envoy also said he told the Iranians their country needed to stop arming, funding and training the militants. The Iranians laid out their policy toward Iraq, Crocker said, describing it as “very similar to our own policy and what the Iraqi government have set out as their own guiding principles.”

He added: “This is about actions not just principles, and I laid out to the Iranians direct, specific concerns about their behavior in Iraq and their support for militias that are fighting Iraqi and coalition forces.”

Historic talks

The Baghdad talks were the first of their kind and a small sign that Washington thinks rapprochement with Iran is possible after more than a quarter-century of diplomatic estrangement that began with the 1979 Islamic revolution.

Crocker said the Iranians wanted to propose a second session. “We will consider that when we receive it,” Crocker told reporters in the U.S.-controlled Green Zone. “The purpose of this meeting was not to arrange other meetings.”

Crocker said Iranian Ambassador Hassan Kazemi Qomi did not raise the subject of seven Iranians now in American custody in Iraq.

HE did not raise it. Like it is entirely up to HIM. (see the end of this post)

“The focus of our discussions were Iraq and Iraq only,” Crocker said.

In the course of the meeting, Ali al-Dabagh, a government spokesman, told reporters that the session was proceeding cordially. “There are good intentions and understanding and commitment between the two countries,” al-Dabagh told reporters.

Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in his Own Words

Ahmadinejad's Letter to the American People

The talks were held at Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s Green Zone office. Al-Maliki did not attend the meeting, but the prime minister greeted the two ambassadors, who shook hands, and led them into a conference room, where the ambassadors sat across from each other.

Future meetings possible

Before leaving the room, al-Maliki told both sides that Iraqis wanted a stable country free of foreign forces and regional interference. The country should not be turned into a base for terrorist groups, he said. He also said that the U.S.-led forces in Iraq were only here to help build up the army and police and the country would not be used as a launching ground for a U.S. attack on a neighbor, a clear reference to Iran.

“We are sure that securing progress in this meeting would, without doubt, enhance the bridges of trust between the two countries and create a positive atmosphere” that would help them deal with other issues, he said. Speaking in Tehran, Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said Monday the talks could lead to future meetings, but only if Washington admits its Middle East policy has not been successful.

“We are hopeful that Washington’s realistic approach to the current issues of Iraq by confessing its failed policy in Iraq and the region and by showing a determination to changing the policy guarantees success of the talks and possible further talks,” Mottaki said.

Monday’s talks, as predicted, had a pinpoint focus: What Washington and Iran — separately or together — could do to contain the sectarian conflagration in Iraq. “The American side has accusations against Iran and the Iranian side has some remarks on the presence of the American forces on Iraqi lands, which they see as a threat to their government,” al-Dabagh said. But much more encumbered the narrow agenda — primarily Iran’s nuclear program and Iranian fears that the Bush administration will seek regime change in Tehran as it did against Saddam Hussein in Iraq.

Underlying issues

Washington and its Sunni Arab allies, on their side, are deeply unnerved by growing Iranian influence in the Middle East and the spread of increasingly radical Islam. Compounding all that is Iran’s open hostility to Israel. Other issues clouding the talks included U.S. Navy exercises in the Persian Gulf last week and tough talk from President Bush about new U.N. penalties over the Iranian nuclear program.

The United States says Iran is trying to build a bomb; Iran says it needs nuclear technology for energy production. Further complicating the talks, Iran said Saturday it had uncovered spy rings organized by the United States and its Western allies Iran accuses the U.S. of improperly seizing five Iranians in Iraq this spring. The U.S. military is holding the five. Iran says they are diplomats; Washington contends they are intelligence agents. The U.S. also has complained about the detention or arrest of several Iranian-Americans in Iran in recent weeks. State Department spokesman Tom Casey said that issue was not on the U.S. agenda for Monday

SOURCE LINK




April 26, 2007 ~ U.S.: Administration Seeks To Engage Iran, Syria On Iraq

WASHINGTON, (RFE/RL) -- For months, the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush has resisted the idea of holding talks with Iran and Syria, which he accuses of mischief in the Middle East, particularly in Iraq.

But this week, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, urged Iran and Syria to attend next week's talks on stabilizing Iraq. The meetings will be held on May 3 and 4 in the Egyptian resort city of Sharm el-Sheikh.

Rice said in an interview published on April 22 in Britain's "Financial Times" newspaper that Iranian Foreign Minister Manuchehr Mottaki would miss what she called an "opportunity" if he couldn't attend next week's meeting.

The next day, Crocker, speaking in Baghdad, echoed Rice, stressing the importance of getting all Iraq's neighbors to discuss how to stabilize the country.

"What happens in Iraq doesn't occur in a vacuum," he said. "There is a region; there are neighbors; there is an international community. And over the next couple of weeks, I think we all are going to be very busy looking at both the regional and the international aspects of Iraq's situation with the conferences that will convene in Sharm el-Sheikh at the beginning of May."

Iraq has invited its neighbors to the meetings, as well as the permanent members of the UN Security Council and the G-8 industrialized nations. Iran has yet to accept the invitation, leading both Rice and Crocker to urge it, as well as Syria, to attend.

Until now, Washington has said it has nothing more to say to Syria about how it believes Damascus should behave. And it says it won't talk to Iran until it suspends uranium enrichment.

Some observers view the statements by Rice and Crocker as a shift in U.S. policy, and perhaps an opportunity for U.S. diplomats to discreetly probe Iranian and Syrian counterparts about eventually holding direct talks.

James Aborezk, who represented the U.S. state of South Dakota in the Senate from 1973 to 1979 and was the first American of Arab descent to serve in the U.S. Congress, has long been a critic of Bush's conduct of the war in Iraq.

Aborezk said he's surprised the administration is urging Iran and Syria to attend the Sharm el-Sheikh meeting, given that Bush has been, to use his word, "adamant" about not talking to representatives of the two countries.

"My guess is that Bush is desperate to get out of Iraq, saving his own ego, which is why he's staying in there so long anyhow," Aborezk said. "And he's looking for any way that anyone can help him get out."

Steven Welsh studies international security issues at the Center for Defense Information, a private policy research center in Washington. He says there are two important reasons that he doesn't believe there's been a shift in Washington's approach to Iran and Syria, particularly Iran.

"Over time, they've taken pains to distinguish between the Iraq issue and the issue of Iran developing nuclear weapons, for one thing," Welsh said. "The second point is [the meeting at Sharm el Sheikh is] a multilateral framework with Iran so that it doesn't simply get reduced to a U.S.-Iranian matter, but rather have the focus be squarely on building peace in Iraq and building Iraqi sovereignty and stable nationhood for Iraq."

Welsh says that if Iran were to be a subject, and not merely a participant, in the Sharm el-Sheikh talks, it should be scrutinized for any contributions it may have made to the sectarian violence in Iraq.

"Everyone thinks that engagement of all relevant parties is important, but I think that there's also the question of Iran being held to account to try to understand exactly what the Iranians are doing with respect to Iraq," Welsh said. "And I think it's important that that be a concern of the international community and not just a U.S.-versus-Iran matter."

Welsh recalls that in December, former U.S. Secretary of State James Baker, one of the leaders of the Iraq Study Group of leading U.S. foreign policy advisers, urged the Bush administration to try to engage all of Iraq's neighbors, including Syria and Iran, in an effort to come up with a local solution to stabilizing Iraq.

And Welsh notes that Baker remarked there was a good chance that Iran or Syria might not joint the talks in good faith -- or might not join them at all. But at least, Baker said, the United States could say it tried to engage them.

TIME/CNN Blog: May 4, 2007 7:27

Conversations: U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker

Posted by Scott MacLeod | Comments (3) | Permalink | Trackbacks (0) | Email This

You don't have to be an Iraq war supporter, or an I'm-not-going-to-cut-and-run guy like George Bush, to be very concerned about a precipitous American withdrawal from Iraq. As Colin Powell said, You break it, you own it. As the Republican presidential candidates were debating Iraq and other issues Thursday night, I was asking U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker about whether the momentum for a withdrawal was undercutting American influence with the key Iraqi players. In short, Crocker (seen here giving a television interview at the Iraq conference in Sharm el Sheikh), is worried about it.

As I mentioned in a previous blog item, I've known Crocker for 25 years or so and consider him, as do his colleagues in the State Department, to be one of the finest diplomats in the American foreign service. Crocker knew my question wasn't partisan and that I wasn't trying to drag him into the domestic political wrangle over Iraq. Nevertheless, he started out cautiously by underlining this, saying, "First, I want to separate this completely from the U.S. political system and debate."

Crocker went into what has become a stock U.S. answer, that the debate is helpful in the sense that it concentrates Iraqi minds on the need to take advantage of U.S. security support (to "buy time" for national reconciliation, for example) while it lasts.

"To an extent, I think the debate is helpful because it makes it clear to Iraqis in and out of the government that there IS a problem here. That an administration that has put so much into the effort is under fire back home, and therefore, if you want us to be able to continue on in this effort, you gotta help by showing that the effort is registering some success."

Then, Crocker spoke about a darker flip side of the effect that the U.S. domestic pressure for withdrawal could have in Iraq:

"The concern I’ve got is that at a certain point the Iraqis may start to make different calculations. They know they are Iraqis. They’re going to be there no matter what. And Iraq is going to be there no matter what. If they come to the conclusion that the United States involvement is definitely a finite affair, and maybe much sooner rather than later, then my concern is that they start making calculations based on where they need to be to protect their vital interests, like their lives, the day after we’re gone. Because they are still going to be there. If they start calculating that way, I think it makes it even harder to get meaningful compromise and reconciliation. I have no evidence to suggest that is currently the case, but it is one of the things that worries me as I watch this go through."

One of the main components of national reconciliation is a dismantling of the Iraqi sectarian militias. I asked Crocker if the withdrawal talk didn't feed the militia mentality, the notion that you need an armed group made up of your own kind because you can't trust the national army to protect you. As Lebanon and other countries have learned, once you have entrenched militias and a weak central authority, you have a civil war that is hard to end.

"I’m afraid it does, yeah," Crocker replied.

The point is that whatever the merits of the invasion and occupation, it makes an enormous difference to the future of Iraq how the U.S. handles its exit. The risk is that bad American decisions will be made on the basis of inflamed domestic politics rather than on what is in the best, calculated interests of Iraq as well as the U.S. You can argue that Bush should not have let it come this far. Now it's important not only to examine the past mistakes but pursue a constructive way forward.

--By Scott MacLeod/Cairo