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War On Terror: Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice says she might talk with Iran this week at a Mideast conference on Iraq. This would end a 28-year break in direct contact with Iran's rogue regime. It's a bad idea. We understand that Rice is keen on stabilizing Iraq. She understands a sad-but-true reality: Iraq's Shiite-led government sees Iran as every bit of an ally as the U.S.

TEHRAN, Iran - Iran's hard-line president proposed Monday to hold public talks with President Bush on a wide range of issues, without saying whether that included international suspicions of the Iranian nuclear program or allegations of Iranian meddling in Iraq. "Last year, I announced readiness for a televised debate over global issues with his excellency Mr. Bush. And now we announce that I am ready to negotiate with him about bilateral issues as well as regional and international issues," Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was quoted as saying on the Web site of Al-Alam, Iran's state-run Arabic satellite television channel. The Iranian leader...

BERLIN (Reuters) - Russia said on Tuesday U.S. plans to deploy a missile shield in central Europe would undermine global non-proliferation efforts and demanded serious discussions on the issue with Washington. "These plans will effectively remove the possibility of dealing with the threat to the nuclear non-proliferation regime with diplomatic means," Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov wrote in the German newspaper Handelsblatt. The United States wants to deploy a radar system in the Czech Republic and 10 interceptor missiles in Poland by 2011-12. It says the system would counter threats from so-called "rogue states" like Iran and North Korea. Tehran...

(2007-03-01) — President George Bush, under fire from conservatives for allowing U.S. emissaries to participate in high-level talks about Iraq with diplomats from Iran and Syria, today sought to downplay the idea that such meetings will confer legitimacy on U.S. foes, as his administration has previously asserted. “Until now, we refused this kind of get-together with Iran and Syria,” said President Bush, “because it would show other radical states that spitting in the face of the United Nations is an effective strategy for getting what you want.” However, the president noted, “since we’ve been following the U.N. plan with Iran,...

A US marine secures a position in the Iraqi-Syrian border town of Kusaiybah, in western Iraq, in 2005. The White House Wednesday again rejected bilateral talks with Iran and Syria despite agreeing to participate with the two countries in an international security conference on Iraq on March 10.(AFP/File/Patrick Baz) WASHINGTON (AFP) - The White House Wednesday again rejected bilateral talks with Iran and Syria despite agreeing to participate with the two countries in an international security conference on Iraq on March 10. "There will not be bilateral talks between the United States and Iran, or the United States and Syria,...

Edwards: Lack of Iran Talks a Mistake Sunday February 18, 2007 11:46 PM By TODD DVORAK Associated Press Writer DUBUQUE, Iowa (AP) - Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards criticized the Bush administration on Sunday for failing to engage directly with Iran to resolve problems with the Iraq war and Iran's effort to develop nuclear weapons. ``It's a huge strategic mistake not to be dealing directly with Iran,'' Edwards told the Associated Press in an interview before a campaign event in Dubuque. ``What we should be doing with Iran, both on the Iraq issue and the nuclear issue, is being much...

SEOUL (Reuters) - North and South Korea said on Wednesday they had agreed to resume ministerial talks, a day after a breakthrough energy-for-arms deal at six-party talks on the North's nuclear programs in Beijing. The dialogue between the two Koreas -- still technically at war -- collapsed in acrimony after Pyongyang tested a volley of missiles last July. The South's Unification Ministry said delegates would meet in the North Korean border city of Kaesong on Thursday to discuss when to open new talks. North Korea's state-run news agency said Pyongyang agreed to the proposal for renewed contact between the two...

BEIJING - Talks on North Korea's nuclear programs resumed on a positive note Thursday, with the Chinese hosts distributing a draft agreement and the North agreeing in principle to initial steps to disarm. Envoys from six nations are trying to agree on steps to implement a September 2005 deal in which North Korea pledged to disarm in exchange for aid and security guarantees. The 2005 deal — the only one to emerge since negotiations began in 2003 — was a broad statement of principles that did not outline any concrete steps for dismantling North Korea's nuclear program. The main U.S....

BEIJING - The U.S. envoy to six-party talks on dismantling North Korea's nuclear weapons program said Friday that there were no signs of a breakthrough and accused the communist state of not being serious about the negotiations. Asked if there were any indications of a breakthrough ahead of the last day of talks Friday, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill said, "No, I am not aware of any." After four days of negotiations in the wake of North Korea's Oct. 9 nuclear test, the North has refused to get into substantive discussions on its atomic weapons, envoys said. Instead,...

US Senator Bill Nelson met Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on Wednesday, a week after a US bipartisan panel recommended the Bush administration engage Syria to help stabilize Iraq. Nelson, a Democrat, was named to the Senate Intelligence Committee this week and said he was on a fact-finding mission to the region. He left later for Amman, Jordan.

While Iran continues to deny that Israel has the right to exist, Iranian and Israeli representatives are holding clandestine talks in Europe to settle an old Israeli debt, Ha'aretz reported Wednesday. Iran is still owed hundreds of millions of dollars for oil it supplied to Israel in the years before the Islamic Revolution in 1979, and representatives of the two countries, now sworn enemies, are holding contacts meant to settle the debt, according to the report in Haaretz. The report was attributed to anonymous Israeli and Swiss officials involved in the negotiations. Two mediation processes involving different parts of the...

Iraqi President Jalal Talabani will travel to Iran this weekend for talks with his Iranian counterpart Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad, but his spokesman denied reports that a three-way summit including Syria’s Bashar al-Assad was planned.British government sources and news agencies had said yesterday that Iran was keen to host three-way talks, but Iraqi sources said there were no plans for such a meeting. “President Jalal Talabani has plans to go to Tehran this weekend to meet with President Ahmedinijad. There is no talk of a trilateral summit,” said presidential spokesman Hiwa Osman. “President Talabani looks forward to meeting President al-Assad in Baghdad...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Robert Gates, President Bush's choice to lead the Pentagon, has argued that the United States should be talking with Iran instead of shunning it.He has said that U.S. spy agencies misled the president on whether Saddam Hussein harbored weapons of mass destruction — but he also thinks the nation should never launch another pre-emptive military strike without "unambiguous" intelligence. Gates, a former CIA director, has expressed his beliefs during three decades of experience at the spy agency, the White House and at the helm of Texas A&M University. It's a trail of words that senators will pore...

A NORTH Korean official said Pyongyang is willing to return to international arms talks and abandon its atomic program if the US takes "corresponding measures," reports suggest. "The nuclear test is an expression of our intention to face the United States across the negotiating table," the unnamed official said, according to South Korea's Yonhap news agency. "What we want is security of the (North), including guaranteeing our system." Yonhap didn't say how or where it contacted the official, or why no name was given. The official didn't elaborate on what the corresponding measures would be. But one of them is...

AP) BANGKOK, Thailand The military has agreed to hold talks with Muslim rebels involved in a bloody insurgency in southern Thailand, the powerful army chief said Thursday, reversing a policy of the elected government deposed in a coup last month. Gen. Sondhi Boonyaratkalin, who led the bloodless Sept. 19 coup against former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, said that officials from certain rebel factions had contacted a top army officer and requested talks. He did not indicate if any date had been set. "I have agreed to the talks," Sondhi said. "I stress that these will be talks, not negotiations." Wan...

Russians 'in N Korea test talks' Mr Lavrov said North Korea must be persuaded back to talks Russia says it is in direct contact with North Korea to try to prevent it from carrying out its plan to test a nuclear weapon. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Moscow was talking to the North Korean leadership in an attempt to dissuade it from conducting a test. It comes two days after North Korea said it would test a nuclear weapon. The announcement drew warnings from the international community to North Korea not to take such a step. The secretive communist...

WASHINGTON, Sept. 11, 2006 – One result of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, was the establishment of U.S. Northern Command to deal with threats aimed at the United States, the organization’s commander said here today. During an interview at the Pentagon’s Radio Day event, Navy Adm. Timothy Keating spoke his personal experiences during the attack and about his command. Keating, who is also the commander of North American Aerospace Defense Command, was the Navy’s director of operations in the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001. “I was in the operations update when the news hit of the first plane...

RAMALLAH, West Bank - Prodded by Britain's visiting leader, the Israeli prime minister and Palestinian president said Sunday they are ready to resume contacts without conditions — a small step that many people hope could lead to resuming peace talks. British Prime Minister Tony Blair also tried to draw Hamas into peace efforts, but the militant Islamic group that controls the Palestinian government rejected his condition that it first renounce violence and recognize Israel. Despite Hamas' tough stance, the readiness of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to meet was the first sign of movement in...

WASHINGTON The investigation stemming from the bribery conviction of former Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham, R-Calif., will continue well past the November midterm elections under a federal court schedule set Monday. The development came at a status hearing for defense contractor Mitchell Wade, who is cooperating with federal prosecutors after pleading guilty in February to bribing Cunningham in exchange for government contracts. U.S. District Judge Ricardo Urbina agreed to delay sentencing proceedings against Wade and set the next status hearing in his case for March 12. That will allow Wade's cooperation to continue in the investigation, which still has several unresolved...

EU set to host Iran nuclear talks By Emma Jane Kirby BBC News, Brussels Ali Larijani has ruled out a swift Iranian response Iran's top nuclear negotiator and the EU's foreign policy chief are meeting to try to diffuse a row over Tehran's contested nuclear plans. The EU presented Iran with a package of incentives designed to make it suspend controversial uranium enrichment. So far Iran has failed to give a response to the offer. Iran says it needs nuclear power for electricity but some countries fear it could be covertly trying to develop nuclear weapons. The talks in Brussels...