Instrumental but excluded
By Simon Tisdall (THE GUARDIAN, 25/07/06):
If Tony Blair, Condoleezza Rice and Ehud Olmert are to be believed, Iran wields significant influence throughout the Middle East, and not least over the current Lebanon crisis. Which, logically, makes it all the more strange that Britain, the US and Israel have so far systematically excluded the Islamic republic from international efforts to end the fighting and achieve a lasting settlement.Tomorrow's Rome conference will be attended by the main western powers and the so-called moderate Arab states. But Iran and its second-string ally, Syria, have not been invited even though it is widely accepted that any peace deal involving their Lebanese political ally, Hizbullah, is unlikely to stick without their support.… Seguir leyendo »