US lends Iran a listening ear

By Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON - In the seemingly never-ending internal battle between hawks and realists in the administration of US President George W Bush for control of foreign policy, the realists appear to have chalked up another win over their once-dominant foes.

The decision to send the State Department's third-ranking official to Geneva on Saturday to join talks between the other four permanent members of the United Nations Security (France, China, Russia and Britain) and Germany, on the one hand, and Iran, one of the three charter members of Bush's "axis of evil", on the other, marks a significant relaxation of administration policy which, until now, had insisted it would not participate in direct talks until Tehran froze its uranium-enrichment program.