By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON, Jun 18 1998 (IPS)

The United States, headed for a clash with Iran Sunday on the soccer field at the World Cup tournament in France, meanwhile has taken the lead in the diplomatic tango between the two nations.

On Wednesday, U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright told the Asia Society that Washington wanted to pursue a “parallel” process to intensify exchanges between the two nations and eventually develop a “roadmap” for normalisation.

Stamping his seal on Albright’s remarks, President Bill Clinton said Thursday that he favoured a “genuine reconciliation with Iran based on mutuality and reciprocity.” Washington, believed Iran was “changing in a positive way, and we want to support that,” he declared.

Initial Iranian reaction was negative. “Washington’s mere announcement that it is prepared to establish ties with Iran is inadequate,” said the official Teheran Radio. It added that the United States must “show goodwill as well” by ending support for an Iraq-based rebel movement, freeing Teheran’s frozen assets, and “apologis(ing) to the Iranian nation for its wrong policies toward Iran.”

U.S. officials and independent analysts here were quick to downplay the radio’s statement. “We would expect the officials in Iran to take some time to absorb the significance of the secretary’s statements would therefore not regard this particular statement as definitive in any way,” said State Department spokesman James Rubin.

Prof. James Bill, an Iran specialist at William and Mary University in Virginia, agreed with that assessment – particularly in light of the power struggle inside Iran between reformist supporters of the elected president, Mohammed Khatemi, and conservatives associated with supreme leader Ali Khameini.

That struggle intensified in recent weeks with the start of the trial of Teheran Mayor and Khatemi ally Gholamhossein Karabaschi on corruption charges.

“For the first time, people supporting Khatemi are organising and going into the streets,” Bill observed. “Iran is in the middle of a knock-down, drag-out power struggle, in which both sides will be very careful about reacting to new U.S. gestures…you can’t expect Iran to respond now.”

In her speech, Albright announced no new concrete steps by Washington, other than the streamlining of visa procedures for Iranians who wish to come to the United States and a revision of the State Department’s travel warning on Iran to reflect the more welcome environment there.

Despite objections Teheran’s alleged nuclear-weapons programme, sponsorship of Islamic terrorist groups, and opposition to Arab- Israeli peace, however, Albright accentuated the positive.

In particular, she noted Khatemi’s conciliatory remarks towards the United States and the West since his landslide election last May, Iran’s welcome of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, Khatemi’s denunciation of terrorism and the killing of civilian Israelis, its peace-making efforts in Afghanistan, and its improvement in ties with Saudi Arabia and other Gulf neighbours.

“We view these developments with interest, both with regard to the possibility of Iran assuming its rightful place in the world community, and the chance for better bilateral ties,” Albright said.

In an unprecedented gesture for a top US official, she also appeared to recognise Iranian grievances against the United States for its support of the Shah during the Cold War. “The existencies of the Cold War,” she said, “generated U.S. policies and activities that were resented by many Iranians. In retrospect, it is possible to understand their reaction.”

“That is a definite gesture,” said Richard Murphy, a former Middle East expert in the President Reagan administration. He praised Albright’s address overall as a “blow for realism. It confirms that things are moving in the right direction.”

That notion was bolstered by Rubin Thursday when he rejected the phrase “dual containment” – a slogan used for several years by top officials – to describe US policy toward both Iran and Iraq. He also differentiated between Iraq and Iran, praising the latter for taking “major steps forward” in press freedom and the rule of law.

At the same time, Rubin and Albright both insisted that Washington was not ready to lift economic sanctions against Iran or its opposition to the construction of new pipelines that could take oil and gas produced in the Caspian-Central Asian region of the former Soviet Union to Iranian ports on the Gulf.

Instead, Washington has been promoting the building of a multi- billion-dollar pipeline from Baku in Azerbaijan westward to Ceyhan, Turkey, precisely to avoid to Iran, despite the fact that the Iranian route would be both much shorter and cheaper. Iran has strongly objected to this as being “against the progress and development of the entire region…”

In what some analysts interpreted as a conciliatory gesture, Clinton last month blew a major hole in the 1996 Iran-Libya Sanctions Act (ILSA), which requires the president to impose sanctions against foreign oil and gas firms investing more than 20 million dollars a year in Iran’s oil and gas sector.

He issued a “national interest” waiver against three foreign companies that planned to invest two billion dollars in developing Iranian gas fields and gave notice that European Union (EU) oil firms would receive a blanket waiver in the future.

The administration now was considering issuing licenses to U.S. companies to engage in oil “swaps” in Iran whereby a producer delivered crude to Iran’s Caspian ports and picked up equal amounts of crude from Iran’s Gulf ports. U.S. officials, worried about Congressional reaction, however, have stalled the license process, according to Julia Nanay, director of the Petroleum Finance Co.

With Iran still a hot political issue, the administration, despite enormous pressure from US oil companies, does not want to be seen making unilateral concessions to Teheran in the run-up to Congressional elections in November. “(Officials) say it will be easier after November,” said Nanay.

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