Iran agrees to negotiate on Iraq issues with 'Great Satan'A Washington analyst on Iran, Jon Alterman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said that although talks will not go further than Iraq, their atmosphere "will spill over into every other area of contention between the United States and Iran."
http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/0317iran-us0317.htmlIran Lectures America on Conduct of Iraq WarIran's chief nuclear negotiator, Ali Larijani, told the Iranian parliament that a team of negotiators would meet Washington's ambassador to Baghdad, Zalmay Khalilzad, but he lectured the Americans on how Iran expected them to conduct themselves.
Iran's training, funding and support for Shiite militias in Iraq is often cited as a factor in Iraq's rising sectarian strife, but Mr Larijani said: "I think Iraq is a good testing ground for America to take a harder look at the way it acts. If there's a determination in America to take that hard look, then we're prepared to help."
Washington's response had the same tone, with the White House spokesman, Scott McClellan, insisting there would be an Iraq-only mandate for the meeting and that the direct talks on the nuclear crisis would remain the preserve of the European, Russian and Chinese negotiators already wrestling with it.
Yet President George Bush's National Security Adviser, Stephen Hadley, linked the two by interpreting the Tehran move as an indication that the Iranian leadership was "finally beginning to listen" to the countries that had referred the nuclear crisis to the United Nations Security Council. Mr Larijani, the general secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, said he was acting at the request of Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, a Shiite religious leader in Iraq.
http://smh.com.au/news/world/take-long-hard-look-at-iraq-iran-warns-us/2006/03/17/1142582522186.html
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