[lit-ideas] culture clashes & politics

 
Monty Python funny and a shadow of things to  come....
 
_http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=615&e=18&u=/nm/davos_iran_mea
l_dc_ 
(http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=615&e=18&u=/nm/davos_iran_meal_dc)
 
 
Meal from Hell Whets Appetite for US-Iran  Clash
Sat Jan 29, 4:31 PM ET
By Paul Taylor  
DAVOS, Switzerland (Reuters) - Call it the meal from hell.  
A World Economic Forum (_news_ 
(http://us.rd.yahoo.com/DailyNews/manual/nm/pl_nm/davos_iran_meal_dc/14137814/*http://news.search.yahoo.com/search/news?fr=ne
ws-storylinks&p="World%20Economic%20Forum"&c=&n=20&yn=c&c=news&cs=nw)   - 
_web  sites_ 
(http://us.rd.yahoo.com/DailyNews/manual/nm/pl_nm/davos_iran_meal_dc/14137814/*http://search.yahoo.com/search?fr=web-storylinks&p=World%20Economic%
20Forum) ) dinner designed to promote dialogue between Iran and the United  
States on Friday night began with a comic strip series of diplomatic and  
gastronomic blunders, and ended with a sharp exchange over nuclear weapons.  
With Iran's vice-president and foreign minister in the room, the organizers  
began by announcing they had disinvited Swiss cartoonist Patrick Chappatte, 
one  of the listed panelists, because the issues were too serious.  
The star guest, U.S. Senator Joe Biden, ranking Democrat on the Senate  
foreign relations committee, was missing. The organizers kept saying he was on  
his 
way.  
Moderator David Ignatius, a Washington Post columnist, apologized for the  
fact that wine had been served, upsetting the Muslim guests. Waiters cleared 
the 
 offending glasses.  
They also removed the menus since the hotel had planned to serve non-hallal  
meat, breaching Islamic dietary rules. Even the soup spoons were withdrawn --  
erroneously, it transpired.  
One participant asked whether different cultures could not tolerate each  
other's dietary customs. Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi responded that  
tolerance was fine but it did not mean people should not respect each other's  
religious values.  
If wine was served, his delegation could not participate in the meal, he  
said.  
SELF-SUFFICIENCY  
The questioning quickly focused on Iran's disputed nuclear program and the  
risk of a U.S. or Israeli military strike on its atomic facilities.  
Kharrazi swore anew the program was purely for peaceful, civilian purposes,  
contrary to U.S. and Israeli charges that it is a front for a secret drive to  
build nuclear weapons.  
The minister insisted Iran had every legal right to develop its scientific  
potential, including by mastering the enrichment of uranium, a process that can 
 help make a bomb.  
"We want to be independent. That's why we developed our nuclear technology.  
It has become a matter of national pride," he said.  
Asked whether it might be in Iran's national interest to foreswear nuclear  
enrichment rather that risk isolation, tougher economic sanctions and military  
action, he said maintaining scientific self-sufficiency was one of Tehran's  
highest goals.  
"Iran cannot be ignored. Its rights cannot be denied. Such a country with so  
much potential has to be given room to play its role," Kharrazi said.  
Perhaps feeling the atmosphere was becoming too heated, hotel staff opened  
the windows, sending a blast of icy alpine air (outdoor temperature -15 C)  
through the room.  
Biden finally arrived an hour and 20 minutes late, having gone to the wrong  
hotel. His wife's figure-hugging leather pants and a top that left her arms 
bare  from the shoulders were in stark contrast to Vice-President Masoumeh 
Ebtekar's  all-enveloping chador, although both wore black.  
Biden, who had a long private meeting with Kharrazi at Davos last year, said  
Washington should join three major European nations in trying to negotiate a  
deal under which Iran would end nuclear enrichment in return for security and 
 economic benefits.  
He cast doubt on Kharrazi's assurances, saying he could understand why there  
could be consensus in Iran on the need for nuclear arms because it lived in a 
 dangerous neighborhood.  
Both Iran and the U.S. administration must "grow up" and talk to each other  
to get off "the course of unintended consequences," Biden said.  
The Bush administration should be willing to give assurances that Washington  
did not seek "regime change" in Iran if Tehran agreed to remove suspicions 
about  its nuclear program.  



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