The British Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, played down a rift with the United States about possible military action to prevent Iran acquiring a nuclear weapon before he began talks at the White House on Monday with the nominated Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice.
Last week the White House identified Iran as topping its list of foreign policy trouble spots for George Bush’s second term. Bush has refused to rule out military action and Straw has said he can conceive of no circumstances in which he would back force.
Together with his French and German colleagues he has been engaged in negotiations with Iran.
The British Foreign Office admits that there are differences with Washington but insisted that they have been exaggerated.
Straw said the Iranian issue highlighted the nature of the US-British relationship. ”We are strong if we are working with other Europeans in close alliance with the US,” he said. ”We are much weaker if we are not working together.”
The Foreign Office said Straw would tell Rice that he was under no illusions about Iran and that the European diplomatic initiative might in the end fail.
”We have nothing to lose,” a Foreign Office source said. ”If we are successful, good. If we are not, at least we can say we tried everything.”
An internal Foreign Office report on the latest round of talks with Iran was pessimistic. ”Something had already been agreed and the Iranians were talking as if it had not,” the source said.
The Iranian government denies that it is intent on building a nuclear bomb and insists that its programme is for purely civilian purposes. It hinted on Monday that it might be prepared to make the concession of allowing the International Atomic Energy Agency unfettered access to the Parchin military base.
IAEA inspectors say they were denied access to parts of the base earlier this month.
Washington alleges that covert nuclear tests may have taken place at Parchin. Asked if the inspectors could go back, Hossein Mousavian, one of Iran’s chief nuclear negotiators, said yesterday: ”I cannot rule this out.”
Straw flew to Washington on Sunday night doubting whether he would be able to land because of the heavy snow.
In addition to Rice he is due to meet Richard Lugar, chairperson of the Senate foreign affairs committee, Stephen Hadley, whom Bush has appointed national security adviser in succession to Rice, and Colin Powell, the outgoing secretary of state, with whom he has enjoyed a good relationship.
The Foreign Office said the main issue on Straw’s visit was not Iran but the Israeli-Palestinian conference which Tony Blair will chair in London on March 1-2.
The Foreign Office has admitted for the first time that Washington was initially sceptical about the conference but insisted that it had come round.
The date of the conference was set to accommodate Rice, who is squeezing it between visits to Europe and the Middle East.
Straw said: ”The London meeting will bring together the Palestinians and many nations in support of the Palestinians to discuss how we can make a viable entity when Israel withdraws from Gaza.”
One of the biggest transatlantic issues exercising the US is an EU proposal to lift its arms embargo on China, imposed after the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989.
Britain, trying to bridge the gap, has been telling Washington that the embargo will be replaced by the EU code of conduct on arms, saying that that will be tougher than the embargo.
Straw is due to fly home on Tuesday. – Guardian Unlimited Â