Fewer peace talks, please!

From my latest article:

About five years ago, a young Iranian man became involved with the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding at Eastern Mennonite University in Harrisburg, Pa., where he joined a program through which college students and recent graduates learn practical skills in conflict resolution. At the end of his stay, he returned to Iran, where he became a member of the Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and, via e-mail, kept in touch with his religious friends in the United States.

In August 2006, the man (his U.S. contacts wouldn't name him) called the Mennonites to tell them that the recently elected Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, would be coming to New York to speak before the United Nations General Assembly. He brokered a meeting in a ballroom at Ahmadinejad's Manhattan hotel. David Culp, legislative representative at the Friends Committee on National Legislation, was among the approximately 40 Americans who asked the Iranian president, among other things, about his country's nuclear ambitions and his thoughts on the Holocaust. "I came away convinced he was not interested in developing nuclear weapons," Culp said, adding, "His thoughts on Jews and the Holocaust were not very satisfying."

Nonetheless, the meeting was a success. And Ahmadinejad, intrigued by the connection, invited the contingent to Tehran. Soon thereafter, an interdenominational delegation of about 15 traveled to Tehran and met with the president, with religious leaders and with members of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs -- becoming, according to their hosts, the first Americans to step inside the ministry's building since the Islamic revolution in 1979.

It would be fair to call these encounters the beginnings of a sustained dialogue -- and the Americans wanted to continue it....

Then, suddenly, progress stopped.

Give the whole column a read.