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| Europe | |
| Europe weighs pulling envoys from Tehran | |
| 2009-07-02 | |
Withdrawing all 27 ambassadors would be a rare and unusually forceful display of European anger at Iran's crackdown on dissent after the June 12 presidential election, and several diplomats said the European Union would prefer to avoid such a move. Iran arrested nine employees of the British Embassy in Tehran over the weekend, but said it had released all but one of them by Wednesday. The Iranian response to the potential European action was bellicose. A high-ranking Iranian military official demanded that the Europeans apologize for interference in Iran's affairs, which, he said, disqualified European countries from negotiating on Iran's nuclear program. The official, Maj. Gen. Hassan Firouzabadi, the armed forces chief of staff, was quoted by the semiofficial Fars news agency as saying that because of the European Union's "interference" in the postelection unrest, the bloc had "totally lost the competence and qualifications needed for holding any kind of talks with Iran." He added, "We believe that they don't have the right to speak of negotiations before apologizing for their obvious mistakes and showing their regret in practice," Fars said. Iran appears to be caught between strategies: one that does not want to downgrade diplomatic relations with other nations for fear of international isolation, and another that is pushing the concept of foreign interference for domestic reasons. For the West, meanwhile, the Iranian reaction to a potential European diplomatic withdrawal added another layer of complexity to assessments of how to deal with Iran -- not only for Europe, but also for the United States, where the Obama administration had expressed hopes for a new dialogue with Iran before the election-related crackdown. The Iranian authorities have sought to cast Britain in particular as an instigator of the unrest. The nine Iranian employees of the British Embassy who were arrested over the weekend were accused of fomenting unrest. Five were released by Monday night, and Press TV said that three more were released Wednesday, leaving one still in custody. That employee, Fars said Wednesday, "had a remarkable role during the recent unrest in managing it behind the scenes." As the dispute unfolded, the European Union said it would support Britain, but it has been unclear what form that backing would take. Britain has been pushing for a tough response, while Germany, Iran's biggest trading partner in the European Union, is being more cautious. Some Europeans believe the Iranians can be persuaded to avert a confrontation by quickly releasing the remaining British Embassy staff member, diplomats said. They spoke on condition of anonymity because of the delicacy of the matter. Carl Bildt, the foreign minister of Sweden, told reporters in Stockholm on Wednesday -- the day his country took over the presidency of the European Union -- that it was in the interests of the European Union and Iran to retain full diplomatic ties. But he did not exclude the withdrawal of ambassadors, saying that "from the diplomatic perspective, all options are on the table." However, he added that the bloc had "an interest in maintaining full diplomatic relations" with Tehran and that he thought "it would be in Iranian interests that we retain diplomatic courtesies in a situation like this." | |
| Posted by:ryuge |
| #2 The notion that Unka Sam is no longer around to take care of things You mean Unka Obama, sitting in his little log cabin and telling tall tales to "Children"? |
| Posted by: Redneck Jim 2009-07-02 18:41 |
| #1 The notion that Unka Sam is no longer around to take care of things beginning to register? |
| Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2009-07-02 07:31 |