Australia mediating U.S.-Iran

[True_Blue]

CANBERRA (Reuters) - Australia has become a mediator in a nuclear stand-off between Iran and the United States, Prime Minister John Howard says, in a move that mirrors Australia's role in the North Korea nuclear crisis.

Howard said Australia had been able to use its close alliance with the United States and diplomatic ties with Iran to act as a go-between for the two nations -- a role illustrated when U.S. President George W. Bush called him on Friday.

"I was able to talk at some length with President Bush about the substance of my discussion with the Iranian Foreign Minister (at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland)," Howard told Australian television.

"I think all of that helps ... There are a number of countries around the world that we talk to that the Americans don't talk to in the same way and we are able to pass on information," he said.

more....
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/050206/325/fbvps.html

[bemildred]

1. Self-important blowhard. nt

[Pam-Moby]

2. Maybe John Howard can talk some sense

into the Chimp and they will realize that Iran can be handled with diplomacy!! Something they do not know about!!!

[GHOSTDANCER]

3. Australia should stay out of it all. They are just asking for trouble.

I've alway got the impression they were some what of a neutral country, but the more I look at recent governmental backing to this administration, the more I begin to see it different.

[bin.dare]

4. Australia has joined the ranks of the one-legged democracies

It is of more than purely Australian relevance that, with the resignation of the Labor leader Mark Latham, the country has joined the ranks of one-legged democracies, where one of the main parties is in a state of disarray whose end is difficult to predict.

The democratic palsy can strike at the left or, as in Britain, the right - depending on which side has most effectively reinvented itself in the face of the social changes that have moved politics from class to a harder to define, more volatile range of interests and groups. Baldly stated, that is the commonplace of democratic politics in the past 30 or 40 years. But the detail matters, so successful reinvention in any country, or its failure, is of critical interest everywhere.

For a while Latham seemed to be a reinventor who was likely to make it....

(more)
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/foreignaffairs/comment/0,11538,1403161,00.html

[Earth_First]

5. "Nuclear stand-off" ?!

I thought that Iran had no nuclear weapons:

"Iran is believed to be years away from having a nuclear weapon+ -Rumsfeld

http://in.news.yahoo.com/050206/137/2jg91.html