US set for historic Iran meeting

The US and Iran are gearing up for their first high-level talks on Tehran's nuclear programme.

One of the state department's most senior officials, William Burns, will be joined in Geneva by envoys from the EU, China, France, Germany and Russia.

They are expected to discuss incentives for Iran to suspend its uranium and plutonium activities with the country's top nuclear negotiator, Saeed Jalili.

The US attendance is being seen as a major shift in policy.

Rising tension

Saturday's talks will aim to find out how Iran will respond to the West's offer of economic incentives for Tehran to suspend its nuclear activities.

Iran denies any nuclear weapons plans, but is defying UN Security Council demands to halt uranium enrichment.

Reports suggest the US may even consider opening a diplomatic mission in Tehran - which would be the first such link since the US hostage crisis nearly 30 years ago.

the two countries held three rounds of talks in 2007 over security in Iraq

Tags: iran, war, israel, diplomacy, oil prices

clipper's remarks: But coercing Iran to stop its nuclear enrichment program is the goal. So earlier we saw "bad cop" war games and rhetoric by US and Israel, and now this multinational "diplomacy" will play "good cop", to force the will of the US and Israel on Iran. That is not diplomacy, and the shift is temporary, for the election season.

The result (which might be a goal too) will be that the oil traders will sell and lower oil prices will come (as they already did on first news of this), and this game will probably be played between now and Nov. 5th (to help McCain), and then the war-mongering will start again, and possibly an attack by Israel (per neocon John Bolton's clipmark earlier) to force the next President's hand into the conflict.

Bush does not change from his neocon advisers blueprint. This pragmatism is for political expediency and economic benefit for election season purposes.

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