Bianca Jagger Seeks US-Iran Dialogue

Christian Oliver, Reuters:

Rights activist Bianca Jagger, seeking to promote dialogue between Iran and the United States, says she is treading a fine line between criticism of U.S. policy and a need to hold Tehran to account on human rights.

Jagger, the Council of Europe's goodwill ambassador, is in Iran with a group called "U.S. Academics for Peace" seeking to ensure the Islamic Republic does not become the next Iraq. READ MORE

"I have to walk a very narrow line. On the one hand we have to condemn illegal war, regime change and pre-emptive strikes," she told Reuters in an interview.

"At the same time I must discuss human rights issues such as the death penalty, women's rights and civil liberties."

She will meet people such as rights lawyers and former President Mohammad Khatami to work out ways in which Iran and the United States can speak to each other directly.

The United States and Iran severed relations after the 1979 Islamic revolution when radical students stormed the U.S. embassy and held 52 Americans hostage for 444 days.

Washington accuses Iran of seeking nuclear weapons, raising fears it might eventually launch strikes against it. Tehran says its nuclear programme is for peaceful purposes only.

Starting a dialogue to prevent conflict would be hard.

"We are just grains of sand in the desert," Jagger said. "But it is so important for academics to meet academics and people to meet people; it is the only way to move beyond stereotypes," said the Nicaragua-born former jet-setter.

But she doubted the political appetite for rapprochement.

"If (U.S. President) George W. Bush were interested in finding a solution with Iran he would send (Secretary of State) Condoleezza Rice tomorrow," she said.

Dialogue would have to start at a popular level in which groups such as the one she was travelling with would chip away at the White House agenda little by little, starting with college campus newspapers and the mass media.

The group was headed by Jim Jennings, a retired Middle East studies professor. Jennings' group travelled to Iraq with Jagger just before the 2003 invasion, representing 33,000 U.S. academics who signed an anti-war petition.

Jagger felt there was a little more hope in Iran: "Iraq was a fait accompli."