U.S. Change of Heart on Iran and Syria
The first meeting, at the ambassadorial level, will be held next month. Then Rice will sit down at the table with the foreign ministers from Damascus and Tehran at a second meeting in April elsewhere in the region, possibly in Istanbul.
"Better late than never," said Leon E. Panetta, a onetime White House chief of staff who served on the panel, headed by former secretary of state James A. Baker III and former congressman Lee H. Hamilton. Panetta said that the announcement is "an important step in trying to bring stability to Iraq" and that, combined with the recent nuclear agreement with North Korea and renewed efforts by Rice to promote Israeli-Palestinian peace, "the administration is finally recognizing that part of its arsenal is strong diplomacy."
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