US/IRAN: Scowcroft, Brzezinski Urge Bush to Drop Precondition

By Jim Lobe*

WASHINGTON, Jul 22 (IPS) - Two of Washington's most prominent foreign policy greybeards praised Saturday's direct participation in multinational talks with Iran by a senior U.S. diplomat but called on the administration of President George W. Bush to drop his demands that Tehran freeze its uranium enrichment programme as a precondition for broader negotiations.

Ret. Gen. Brent Scowcroft, who served as national security adviser under Republican presidents Gerald Ford and George H. W. Bush, and Zbigniew Brzezinski, who held the same post under Democratic President Jimmy Carter, urged Bush to go further by offering immediate rewards to Tehran in exchange for such a freeze.

And both men warned that repeated U.S. threats to use military force against Iran were counter-productive and strengthened hard-line forces in the regime led by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. They said an actual military attack -- whether by the U.S. or by Israel -- would likely be disastrous for U.S. interests in the region.

"A war with Iran will produce calamities for sure," said Brzezinski, who pointed, among other things, to its likely impact on the price of oil and the likelihood that it would create yet another front to add to the two wars -- Iraq and Afghanstan -- in which U.S. military forces are already engaged.

"(Brzezinski's assessment) may be a little more dire (than mine) but not much," Scowcroft told IPS in a brief interview after the two men spoke at a briefing sponsored by the Centre for Security and International Studies (CSIS) here. "It would turn the region into a cauldron of conflict, bitterness, and hatred. It would turn Islam against us."

Both men have been strongly critical of U.S. policy in the Middle East, particularly the decision to invade Iraq -- although Brzezinski has been considerably more vocal than Scowcroft, who remains a close friend of Bush's father. Both leading lights of the so-called "realist" foreign-policy establishment, they are currently collaborating on a book to be published in September.

Their joint appearance at CSIS, which was announced late last week after the administration had confirmed that undersecretary of state for policy, Amb. William Burns, would attend Saturday's meeting between the so-called P5+1 (the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council and Germany) and Iran, seemed timed to demonstrate strong bipartisan support for continued and enhanced U.S. engagement.

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