In the span of just two weeks, the United States has agreed to hold high-level contacts with Iran and Syria, and to start down the path toward formal diplomatic recognition of North Korea.
Has the Bush administration gone soft on its foes?
As recently as Jan. 12, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice repeated what has been a constant of Bush foreign policy: a refusal to bestow on Iran, Syria and North Korea the legitimacy of diplomatic engagement as long as they refuse to bend on disputed issues.
(snip)
Administration officials insisted Wednesday that the new overtures, including an agreement to join Iran and Syria in talks on Iraq, did not mean there had been a change in policy. “There is no crack,” the White House spokesman, Tony Snow, said. “A number of people have been characterizing U.S. participation in a regional meeting as a change in policy; it is nothing of the sort.”
But foreign policy experts, administration critics on Capitol Hill and former diplomats disagreed, saying the administration appeared to have recognized the extent to which it had tied its own hands by insisting on talking only to friends. Even Ms. Rice had called the opening to Tehran and Damascus a “diplomatic initiative.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/01/washington/01diplo.html?hp
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