U.S., Iran Lawmakers Hold Talks in New York

In the highest-ranking exchange between Tehran and Washington since the 1979 American Embassy takeover, Iranian and U.S. legislators met in New York on Wednesday to begin discussing issues of mutual concern and ways to reduce hostilities.

The meeting, sponsored by the U.S.-Iran Council but approved by Tehran, is being touted as the opening round in an initiative designed to formally end tensions and move more decisively to renew diplomatic relations, according to Iranian and congressional sources.

“This is a signal that Iran is ready to meet publicly with American legislators,” said a well-placed Iranian who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the topic.

During the two-hour session, the American legislators extended an invitation to the Iranians to send a formal delegation to visit their counterparts in Washington. The Iranian source said the five-person delegation from Iran was interested in exploring a two-way exchange that would also take American legislators to Tehran.

Attending the event were Iran’s powerful Speaker of Parliament Mehdi Karrubi, who is in New York for a summit of the Inter-Parliamentary Union, and Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) and Rep. Robert W. Ney (R-Ohio). The U.S.-Iran Council, based in Washington, is a new independent group that brings together senior U.S. officials, regional experts and business organizations to promote better relations.

Specter described the talks as “warm and friendly.”

In an interview, Specter said he hopes that the groundbreaking event will accelerate rapprochement. “It’s time to start a dialogue with Iran, and since there isn’t an official government-to-government dialogue, this parliamentary contact will be the way to break the ice,” he said.

Specter said he also hopes to meet with President Mohammad Khatami when the Iranian leader speaks at the United Nations General Assembly next week.

In a related gesture, three American officials are currently in Iran--two from the State Department and one from the Agency for International Development--to attend a conference sponsored by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, or FAO, according to State Department officials. Earlier this year, fish and wildlife specialists from the Interior Department also attended internationally sponsored events in Iran.

But the FAO meeting in Iran is the first attended there by American diplomats since Islamic rebels seized the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and held 52 Americans hostage for 444 days. The only other visit was a covert trip in the mid-1980s by former National Security Advisor Robert C. McFarlane and White House aide Oliver North during the Reagan administration’s arms-for-hostages debacle.

Both gestures reflect the growing thaw between the two former archrivals more than 2 1/2 years after Khatami called for efforts to “bring down the wall of mistrust” through people-to-people exchanges.

That Iranian initiative has found growing support in Washington. In April and May, 10 congressmen and 10 senators wrote Iran’s U.N. ambassador proposing face-to-face meetings with their counterparts in Iran’s parliament and reciprocal visits to Tehran and Washington.

Specter has been a leading figure in promoting detente. He called for further measures after Secretary of State Madeleine Albright in March announced the partial lifting of economic sanctions on Iranian carpets, pistachios and caviar.

“President Khatami and Iran’s recent elections suggest that Iran may be turning a new page toward democracy and a different government approach. The United States should respond by turning a new page with a prospective olive branch,” he said.

Ney has a long-standing interest in Iran, where, as a teacher on the eve of the Islamic Revolution, he learned the language and became interested in the culture. He too has been a major supporter of cultural and sporting exchanges between Iran and the United States.

The Iranian delegation consisted entirely of reformers. Karrubi was elected this summer as head of the new parliament, which for the first time is overwhelmingly reformist. He was accompanied at the New York event by the lone Jewish member of Iran’s parliament, Maurice Motamed; female lawmaker Elaheh Koulaee; and Ismaeil Gabbarzadeh and Davoud Hassanzadegan.

But the talks mark a turning point because they also have the approval of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has previously been outspoken in opposition to talks with the United States, Iranian sources said Wednesday.

Condemnation of the United States has been a trademark of Khamenei’s decade in power. Just last month, Khamenei charged that Washington was “scheming for the eventual collapse of the Islamic Republic” and ruled out rapprochement.

“In the current state of affairs, anything said in favor of rapprochement or negotiations with America is an insult and betrayal of the Iranian people,” he said during a tour of northwestern Iran.

Tehran also denied reports circulating in the Middle East that Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations, Hadi Nejad Hosseinian, had been given a mandate to begin contacts with important congressional officials.

But well-informed Iranians said Wednesday that Iran’s U.N. mission has in fact been given the green light to initiate and expand official contacts with both official and unofficial Americans.

Follow-up exchanges by legislators from both sides may well become the centerpiece of rapprochement, according to American and Iranian sources.