ASIA TIMES: US EDGES CLOSER TO WAR WITH IRAN

April is the cruelest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing Memory and desire, stirring Dull roots with spring rain. T S Eliot's famous opening lines from The Waste Land come to mind as Washington confirms that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is heading for the Middle East to attend an international conference regarding the Iraq situation, in Kuwait on April 22.

By M K Bhadrakumar
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/JD12Ak03.html

This will be no ordinary run-of-the-mill international conference. It's about Iraq. And Rice may well bump into her Iranian counterpart, Manouchehr Mottaki. The big question is, as Eliot wrote, will they "drink coffee, and talk for an hour?" Indeed, will Mottaki call Rice "the hyacinth girl"? All that US State Department spokesman Sean McCormack would say at his press briefing on Wednesday was that "there's nothing on the schedule for them to meet". He wouldn't make promises, nor rule out anything. But then Tehran hasn't yet announced Mottaki's participation at the Kuwait conference. McCormack, however, volunteered an estimation that the Iranians have incrementally thawed in recent months. He added, "There was a sort of avoidance [initially] on the part of the Iranians. But that's changed ... They [Rice and Mottaki] didn't have what I would describe as any substantive conversations, but there was some interaction [at a previous Istanbul meet on Iraq]." So, if the "iceman cometh" from Tehran, this could undoubtedly turn out to be one of the most crucial missions undertaken by Rice in her diplomatic career.

The entire Middle East will be watching, attentively looking for clues in Rice's gait, her demeanor. They will want to know whether Washington is taking the plunge for unconditional talks with Tehran. Everyone knows that when the Americans talk to the Iranians, finally, the kaleidoscope of Middle Eastern politics will have irrevocably shifted.

The stakes are particularly high for the Middle East's "pro-West" sclerotic rulers. There is already serious unrest in Egypt, a key US ally. Helena Cobban, the contributing editor of the Boston Review and veteran writer on the Middle East, promptly put down in her blog a recollection from the great Cairo riots of 1977, when the late Mohammed Hassanein Heikal told her as he sat in his lovely Nile-side office at the al-Ahram newspaper that "the Egyptian people are like the Nile: they run deep and apparently quietly - until the point where suddenly they burst their banks".

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