Russian officials said Thursday that they would be willing to help break the ice between Iranian and American officials at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization conference on Afghanistan, which opens today in Moscow.
Iran is sending Deputy Foreign Minister Mahdi Akhundzadeh, and Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Patrick Moon will represent the U.S.
"We assume that the launch of such a negotiating process would help reduce tensions in the situation surrounding Iran and the region on the whole," Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Andrei Nesterenko told reporters.
Iran is also attending the conference on Afghanistan at The Hague next week, after staying away from such meetings. But some Iranian analysts cautioned not to read too much into Tehran's decision; their concerns were underscored by Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hasan Qashqavi, who told The Times that the "level of participation is yet to be determined" for the Hague conference. Iran might dispatch a low-level envoy, suggesting an ambivalent response to U.S. gestures.
Iranians are wary of giving Americans a possible public-relations victory without getting anything in return.
"Whenever they need us, they use our influence; but as they reach their objectives, they treat us as a major threat in the region," said a recent editorial in the conservative Siasat Rooz newspaper.
But even some Iranian hard-liners have begun to welcome the idea of cooperating with the U.S. and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in helping secure Afghanistan, calling it a victory for Iranian steadfastness.
There are practical matters as well. Iranian officials say the drug war has cost their nation more than $600 million in the last two years. About 3,700 Iranian security officials were killed and 11,000 maimed in more than 12,000 clashes between traffickers and police officers between 1989 and 2003, according to Iranian statistics cited in a United Nations report.
All indications are that the problem is worsening as Afghanistan descends further into lawlessness. From 2006 to '07, drug seizures, as measured by weight, jumped 35% for heroin, 37% for opium and 52% for hashish, according to figures on the website of Iran's Drug Control Headquarters.
Total drug seizures rose from 155 tons in 2001 to 618 tons in 2007, almost all of it opium, heroin and hashish from Afghanistan; addiction is rapidly becoming Iran's top public health problem.
