Senator Urges White House to Join Talks on Iran

The Los Angeles Times:

A top Democratic senator urged the Bush administration Sunday to join three European allies in negotiating with Iran to get it to abandon its nuclear programs, saying that failure to do so could result in the need to invade the country.

"This is a case where we're … on the sidelines," Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said on "Fox News Sunday." "The three European countries that are negotiating with the Iranians are saying, 'Look, we've got to get in the deal with them. We can't just sit on the sidelines.' " ...

Biden criticized Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice for her recent comments suggesting that the U.S. would not sign on to a deal between the Europeans and Iran even if Tehran agreed to accept a verification program to ensure that its nuclear program was only for peaceful purposes.

"Nothing [the Europeans are] going to be able to do is going to be involved with us unless we're willing to get into some kind of an agreement that results in a verifiable arms control agreement," Biden said on Fox. ...

Speaking on CNN's "Late Edition," Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W. Va.), vice chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said that he had always viewed Iran as being "much more of a problem" than Iraq and that not taking the country seriously would be "an enormous mistake."

"Unlike Iraq, which didn't have nuclear weapons, they certainly are working on it," he said. "I think it's their ambition to have one, and my guess is they will get one." ...