LONDON - Iran and the United States have been engaged in secret "back channel" discussions for the past five years on Iran's nuclear programme and the broader relationship between the two sworn enemies.
The Independent newspaper reports that one of the participants, former senior US diplomat Thomas Pickering,explained that a group of former American diplomats and experts had met Iranian academics and policy advisers "in a lot of different places, although not in the US or Iran".
The group was organised by the United Nations Association of the USA. Its work was facilitated by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, a government-funded think-tank chaired by the former chief UN weapons inspector for Iraq, Rolf Ekeus.
While the nuclear issue was "prominent", Pickering said, "we discussed what's going on domestically in both countries and wide-ranging issues" affecting the US-Iran relationship. Although none of the group members was from the US or Iranian governments, he said that "each side kept their officials informed". The Bush Administration "did not discourage us", he added.
Pickering declined to go into greater detail for fear of jeopardising future meetings of the group of about a dozen Americans and Iranians.
Back-channel talks have often provided crucial impetus in solving the world's most intractable disputes. They usually only become public in case of agreement, as seen with Northern Ireland and the Oslo accords on the Middle East, or failure, as in the case of an Israeli-Syrian informal channel.
The revelation about the existence of an Iran-US back channel coincides with the recent publication by three of its American members, including Pickering, of proposals aimed at overcoming the deadlock between Iran and the West over Tehran's nuclear ambitions.
The initiative addresses the crunch issue of Iran's right to enrich uranium on its own soil while providing guarantees that the nuclear fuel will not be diverted for military purposes.
Pickering spoke of a "rather positive" reaction to the plan, which provides for an international consortium to jointly manage and run uranium enrichment on Iranian soil.
However, the Bush Administration remains wedded to its policy of sanctions aimed at forcing Iran to halt uranium enrichment in line with UN demands, while offering the opportunity to enrich uranium outside the country.
