Iran given deadline to respond on nukes

Observer/Guardian:

Iran was given a fortnight to agree to freeze its uranium enrichment programme yesterday or face further international isolation.

After a day of inconclusive talks in Geneva, a six-nation negotiating team warned the Iranian delegation that it had run out of patience and demanded a 'yes or no' answer to a proposal it put forward five weeks ago.

Under that offer, sponsored jointly by the US, Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China, Iran would not expand its uranium enrichment programme, while the international community refrained from imposing further sanctions. This phase would last six weeks, possibly paving the way for suspension of enrichment and more comprehensive talks.

The failure to reach agreement appeared likely to trigger new European and UN sanctions and to raise tensions in the Gulf. An Iranian rejection would also represent a rebuff to conciliatory moves from Washington, including the dispatch of a senior diplomat to Geneva to attend high-level talks with the Iranians for the first time in nearly three decades. The diplomat, William Burns, left Geneva without making any public comments.

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Fortnight is Brit speak for two weeks. I suspect that Iran will continue to dawdle and the negotiators will continue to let them get away with it. That has been the pattern for the last three or four years.

One of the dangers Obama presents with his personal diplomacy is that once they reject him he will have very little wiggle room in avoiding dealing with the consequences of that failure. In other words his personal diplomacy may propel him closer to the war he thinks he can avoid.