Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 30 Nov. - 6 Dec. 2000 Issue No.510

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Ankara's EU chances slipping

By Azadeh Moaveni

It is said in Tehran that foreign relations is Iranian President Mohamed Khatami's forte. From the revival and, in some cases, re-establishment, of Iran's ties with its Gulf neighbours, to a cautious reaching out toward Europe, Khatami has successfully made Iran's relationship with the outside world a key priority of his tenure. Now, with growing uncertainty that the president will run in the May 2000 presidential elections, the question emerging is whether progress abroad will be enough to keep Khatami on board for a second term.

This week, during a conference on the constitution, Khatami admitted more boldly and directly than ever that his powers as president are seriously limited by the system. He said that while safeguarding the constitution is the key role of the presidency, he has been denied the authority required to fulfil this responsibility. Although Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei made efforts during his own tenure to extend the authority of the president, Khatami said, the basic legal tools still do not exist for the president to push for the implementation of laws vested in the constitution.

During Khatami's inaugural visit to the United Nations and in the first months of his presidency, he pursued Iran's international ties with a force and enthusiasm unparalleled since the Islamic Revolution. He charmed journalists in New York, gave a speech in Arabic in Damascus and visited the grave of Marie Curie in Paris.

It was a diplomacy intended to leave its mark and it succeeded. "For the first time, Iranians had a president who could hold his own diplomatically, who didn't look more at home sitting on the ground than in receptions," says an Iranian analyst and one-time contributor to the pro-reform press.

When the international whirlwind subsided, Khatami turned to his Gulf neighbours for the serious foreign policy work. Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi met with his Iraqi counterpart during the OPEC summit in Venezuela, raising the possibility of relations for the first time since the Iran-Iraq war. The re-establishment of ties with Egypt, too, have seemed close to realisation for months. Chairing the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) and pushing for Iran's deputy oil minister to become OPEC secretary-general, Khatami's government established regional leadership as a twin priority to broadening ties to Europe. These routes enabled Khatami to actualise some of the ideals of his presidency -- tolerance, dialogue and cooperation.

Indeed, in some instances, the president's foreign initiatives have been infused with the possibilities they could impact inside Iran. His Dialogue of Civilisations, for example, inaugurated together with the United Nations, advocates the expansion of cultural and educational ties, which could eventually pave the way for political relations with states with which a direct diplomatic effort is currently unfeasible.

The United States, the great remaining international blot on Iran's foreign policy card, is candid about its wishes to open discussions with Iran. But here, Khatami is stalled by powerful interests in the conservative establishment that view the resumption of ties with the US -- undertaken by any leader outside their control -- a threat to their vested interests.

But with the most significant foreign policy steps already taken and the question of US ties left to the domestic politics it is hostage to, how much room remains for Iran to develop its international and regional role? Is enough left undone to fill the agenda of a president who is at his most effective outside the borders of his own country? With the region's attention focused on the conflict inside Palestine, the conditions are not propitious for developing the bilateral issues, like sovereignty over the Greater and Smaller Tunb Islands. The stepped-up operations of Lebanon's Hizbullah militia could also complicate the president's détente. Iranian support for Hizbullah has historically involved domestic forces unaccountable to the foreign policy-making tiers of the government. Khatami prefers to deal with the Lebanese government, but the international community is pressing Iran to use its influence to pressure Hizbullah -- a foreign policy card that the president does not hold.

As the end of his term approaches, most Iranians would agree that the Khatami legacy can best be measured by what the president accomplished externally -- rehabilitating its foreign policy face and carving a niche for Iranian leadership by dint of his own charisma and personal integrity. But with Khatami acknowledging for the first time that the country's constitution does not vest him with the authority to do his job, it remains unclear whether progress on the international front will be enough incentive for him to run again.

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