Tag: deadline
Senate OKs Bill To Let Congress Review Iran Nuclear Deal on 98-1 Vote

Senate OKs Bill To Let Congress Review Iran Nuclear Deal on 98-1 Vote

By Paul Richter and Lisa Mascaro, Tribune Washington Bureau (TNS)

WASHINGTON — In a rare bipartisan accord, the Senate overwhelmingly approved a bill Thursday that would give Congress power to review any nuclear deal with Iran, ending months of tense negotiations with the White House.

The measure, which passed 98-1, is likely to pass the House as early as next week and thus provide an outlet for lawmakers determined to have a say in an emerging deal between six international powers and Tehran.

The nearly unanimous Senate vote came after the White House had threatened to veto proposals that would give Congress a more assertive role or that would add fresh demands to the nuclear negotiations.

Despite fierce criticism from Republican lawmakers in recent days, only Senator Tom Cotton (R-AK), cast a negative vote. Cotton, a freshman senator, had challenged party leaders by introducing amendments that he said would toughen the bill, but that critics said would doom its chances of approval.

Passage came minutes after the Senate had voted 96-3 to cut off further debate on dozens of amendments that Republicans had offered.

The bipartisan bill, sponsored by Senator Bob Corker (R-TN), and Senator Ben Cardin (D-MD), would give Congress “the right to vote for or against any change in the status quo, when it comes to Iran,” said Senator John Cornyn (R-TeX), moments after the vote.

The White House also portrayed the bill as a victory.

Bernadette Meehan, spokeswoman for the National Security Council, called it “the kind of reasonable and acceptable compromise that the president would be willing to sign.”

She urged the House to “similarly protect this compromise bill, which constitutes a straightforward, fair process for Congress to be able to evaluate a final comprehensive deal.”

Iran is negotiating with the United States and five other world powers in an effort to meet a June 30 deadline to produce a comprehensive agreement that would ease economic sanctions on Tehran if it accepts restrictions aimed at preventing it from obtaining a nuclear weapon.

The bill that passed the Senate would give Congress at least 30 days to deliberate over any deal, and sets up a procedure for lawmakers to vote to register their support or disapproval of the agreement.

During that period, the Obama administration will be barred from suspending any congressionally imposed sanctions on Iran.

It is unclear whether critics of a deal with Iran could rally enough congressional support to block an agreement that the White House has negotiated. Opponents would need 67 senators to override an expected presidential veto.

Some senior Republican lawmakers and U.S. allies say congressional critics are unlikely to be able to stop a deal.

The measure won backing from many Democratic lawmakers who wanted Congress to have a say on the issue, and decided the measure didn’t represent a serious threat to the diplomacy as it moves into the end game.

Some Democrats said the measure doesn’t give members of Congress any leverage over the Iran deal that they didn’t already have.

President Barack Obama, who initially opposed the bill as an infringement of his authority to conduct foreign affairs, shifted ground last month and said he could accept a modified version that passed the Senate Foreign Relations Committee by a 19-0 margin.

Conservative critics sought last week to add amendments that threatened to derail that bill.

Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL), a presidential candidate, sought to require Iran to recognize Israel’s right to exist, for example, an issue that was never part of the negotiations.

Conservative support for the bill, which was strong when the bill passed in committee, faded when critics began to fear it would not allow Congress to derail any agreement with Iran.

Yet almost all senators ultimately voted for the measure because of their desire to give Congress a say.

House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-OH), said after the Senate vote that he looked forward to the bill’s passage in the House “to hold President Obama’s administration accountable.”

Photo: Gage Skidmore via Flickr

Iran Talks Grind Into Overtime As Top Diplomats Leave

Iran Talks Grind Into Overtime As Top Diplomats Leave

By Paul Richter, Los Angeles Times (TNS)

International talks over Iran’s disputed nuclear program moved into wearying overtime Wednesday, with their future unclear and a shrinking corps of top diplomats taking part.

Secretary of State John F. Kerry and other negotiators, who are seeking a preliminary deal to limit Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for easing sanctions, failed to meet a self-imposed deadline at midnight Tuesday but kept going in search of a breakthrough.

Diplomats insist the closed-door talks are making progress, and could produce an acceptable outcome at any time that would kick the negotiations into their final phase.

Yet major conflicts remain and much work is needed, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius and British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond told reporters.

Fabius, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi have already left Lausanne, leaving aides to negotiate for them.

One possibility is the talks will break up in the next day or so with only a general press statement, then resume after a few days to try to work out a detailed agreement that can help the Obama administration convince skeptics in Congress that it is making progress.

But a halt without a deal would be a setback for the White House, which is concerned that Congress will impose new sanctions that could wreck the talks when it returns April 13.

The five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council — the United States, France, Britain, Russia, and China — plus Germany have spent the last 18 months in intense talks with Iran in an effort to curb its nuclear program. Talks began more than a decade ago.

The diplomats missed two deadlines last year, and President Obama told them he wanted a definitive decision by Tuesday on whether an agreement with Iran was possible.

But the talks hit an impasse on several key issues, including the lifting of U.N. sanctions on Iran, and restraints on Iran’s research and development that could help it modernize its ability to enrich uranium. Iran denies it is seeking to build nuclear weapons.

The talks have careened from optimism to pessimism and back over the last week. Diplomats said Tuesday morning that a deal was in sight, and the delegations had prepared large meeting halls to announce a deal, and some in the U.S. party had packed their bags to go home.

But the discussions seemed to run aground Tuesday afternoon. “The mood changed hour to hour,” said one diplomat.

A senior U.S. official said in a statement before six p.m that American negotiators were “evaluating the best path forward.”

“It’s time for Iran to make the serious commitments that they know the international community is expecting them to make,” White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said in Washington.

Without those pledges from Iran, the U.S. and its five negotiating partners will have to consider “other alternatives,” Earnest said.

Obama and his top aides held a late night secure video conference call with Kerry and his negotiating team and “thanked the team for their continuing efforts,” the White House announced.

Photo: U.S. Embassy Vienna via Flickr

Negotiations On Iran’s Nuclear Program Seem Headed Toward Overtime

Negotiations On Iran’s Nuclear Program Seem Headed Toward Overtime

By Paul Richter, Los Angeles Times (TNS)

LAUSANNE, Switzerland — The U.S. and five other world powers prepared Tuesday to announce a preliminary agreement that would enable them to continue negotiations to curb Iran’s nuclear program for the next three months, though with many key issues unresolved.

In six days of intense high-level talks, the group was able to avoid a breakdown that would have imperiled an 18-month effort to reach a deal curbing Iran’s nuclear activities. But the group has not reached agreement on some key issues.

Top diplomats are expected to make an announcement later Tuesday outlining the progress so far and a plan to meet a June 30 deadline for completing a final, detailed agreement.

U.S. officials denied that an agreement had been reached. But other officials said an announcement would be likely Tuesday afternoon or evening at a university in Lausanne.

Whether the progress so far, and an agreement to keep talking, would be enough to convince Congress and skeptical U.S. allies in the Middle East that the talks are worthwhile will be a major question over the next several weeks.

As Tuesday night’s deadline for the current round of talks neared, diplomats began making plans. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, speaking in Moscow before returning to Switzerland for the expected announcement, said chances of an agreement were “high.”

The negotiations here seek a deal that would ease sanctions on Iran if it accepts, for ten to fifteen years, restrictions on its nuclear program.

The stakes are high. A deal could reduce the chances of war, ease Iran’s international isolation, and, over time, possibly transform America’s relationship with a longtime adversary. Critics say a bad deal would pave the way to an Iranian bomb and give Tehran a financial boost that could strengthen its efforts to expand its regional influence.

Foreign ministers from Iran, the United States, France, Germany, Britain, Russia, and China have struggled with a series of tough issues this week, notably what restrictions will remain on Iran’s research and development, and how quickly United Nations sanctions will be lifted.

Iranian officials maintained a tough stance as the deadline approached, in what some outside analysts said appeared to be an effort to create a last-minute crisis that would enable them to extract concessions.

U.S. officials have said that if they reached a “framework” deal they would release detailed information to Congress and provide more general information to the public to explain how they have resolved the major political issues involved in the talks.

But to the extent the agreement so far lacks detail, the deal-making is likely to come under attack by the critics.

“It could be very tricky for [Secretary of State John] Kerry,” said Gary Samore, a former top White House aide who is research director at the the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.

The administration’s supporters have been urging them to release as many details as possible to strengthen what appears to be an uphill effort to defend the deal.

On Monday officials said the negotiators had set aside for the future one major issue: how to deal with Iran’s stockpile of low-enriched uranium. Many private nuclear experts believed the diplomatic group had sealed an agreement with Iran that would have sent much of Iran’s enriched uranium to Russia to assure that it couldn’t be further enriched to make bomb fuel.

But diplomats acknowledged that in fact Iran was not committed to such an approach and that the issue was unresolved.

Photo: U.S. Embassy Vienna via Flickr

Obama, Iraqis Face Difficult Decisions As Troop Withdrawal Deadline Nears

The deadline for troop withdrawal in Iraq is approaching at the end of the year, but calls from military leaders and people within Iraq have minimized the chances that all U.S. soldiers will actually leave.

According to a 2008 security agreement between the United States and Iraq, all of the current 45,000 U.S. troops should be out of the country by Dec. 31, 2011. But even though no U.S. troops were killed in Iraq in August, the country remains plagued by internal violence. Last month, at least 70 Iraqis were killed in a single day, as suicide bombings, roadside explosions, and shootings swept across the country. Many have said that such strife is evidence of the work to still be done in Iraq before the America ends its presence there.

The prospect of a full withdrawal is particularly daunting for Kurds in the north, who fear that the ethnic cleansing and sectarian violence of the past will be intensified if American forces leave. Recent tensions with Turkey and subsequent attacks have made Kurds even less confident in their political future and skeptical that peace will come quickly. Massoud Barzani, the leader of the Kurdish autonomous region in Iraq, made a televised appeal Tuesday, urging U.S. troops to stay past the Dec. 31 deadline because the Iraqi military is still not powerful or cohesive enough. “If the American forces withdraw, there will be a possibility of civil war,” he said.

The Iraqi government must formally request for the United States to stay beyond the deadline, according to the 2008 agreement. Despite the Kurdish worries, an extension of U.S. troop presence is unpopular among most Iraqis, so leaders have so far been reluctant to make a firm decision.

The question is also eliciting strong reactions here at home, where millions of Americans believe the war was unnecessary and unjust. While Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has said that discussions are ongoing, rumors about decreasing troop levels have already elicited strong reactions. Fox News cited anonymous sources in saying that Obama will reduce the presence to 3,000 troops at the end of the year. According to the report, generals on the ground believe such a low number will pose significant challenges to maintaining peace in Iraq.

The extent of Iraq troop withdrawals this year is critical to Obama’s reelection hopes. Back in 2008, he set himself apart from the other Democratic presidential hopefuls by highlighting his opposition to the Iraq War and his commitment, if elected, to complete troop withdrawal. The president officially ended combat operations in Iraq last year, and he reasserted his commitment to bringing all troops home by the end of 2011.

Now Obama must decide whether to maintain a military presence in Iraq and jeopardize his already-waning support from anti-war progressives. If the 3,000 troops number is true, it reflects how torn the administration is about keeping American forces there: The number is basically as close to zero as Obama could get without fully pulling out and risking the potential chaos of which generals and Kurds have warned. The Iraq troop withdrawal debate might end up as another one of the president’s efforts to please both sides with a compromise that, in the end, leaves everyone dissatisfied.