Cohorts disavow Obama stance

Three prominent Democrats yesterday rejected Sen. Barack Obama’s position of meeting unconditionally with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and leaders of other American enemies.

Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, former Sen. Gary Hart of Colorado and former Rep. Harold E. Ford Jr. of Tennessee distanced themselves from Mr. Obama’s position, each saying that preconditions for any such meeting would be essential.

“I’ll concede, you cannot meet with foreign leaders — with terrorists, rather, those that lead rogue nations — without some conditions,” Mr. Ford said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

Mr. Obama was asked in a Democratic debate in July whether he would “be willing to meet separately, without precondition … with the leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea.”

“I would,” Mr. Obama said. “And the reason is this: that the notion that somehow not talking to countries is punishment to them — which has been the guiding diplomatic principle of this administration — is ridiculous. … We have the obligation to find areas where we can potentially move forward. I think that it is a disgrace that we have not spoken to them.”

Mr. Obama later said he would first send lower-level diplomats to prepare high-level talks, but has continued to pledge to hold such unconditional meetings. Mr. Hart yesterday pointed to that distinction in the Democratic presidential candidate’s position.

“I don’t think Barack Obama or any other president is going to meet with a head of state without lower-level discussions preceding that,” he said on CNN’s “Late Edition.” “What you do is send diplomats and negotiators to explore areas of mutual interest. And if it does seem profitable, then you go to the heads of state.”

Mr. Biden, who is chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and sought the Democratic presidential nod this year, said Mr. Obama gave the “wrong answer” in the debate, but added that the senator from Illinois has “learned a hell of a lot.”

“What we’re talking about here is that he has repeatedly since then said he would not negotiate unconditionally, meaning him sitting down, alone, right off the bat with these leaders,” Mr. Biden said on ABC’s “This Week.”

“This is a fellow who I think shorthanded an answer that in fact was the wrong answer, in my view, saying I would within my first year, it implied he’d personally sit down with anybody who wanted to sit down with him. That’s not what he meant. That’s not what he has said since then for the last year or thereabout.”

Mr. Obama said in February that he has been misunderstood. “I will meet without preconditions,” he said on CNN’s “The Situation Room.”

His campaign Web site includes a line under the heading “diplomacy”: “Barack Obama is the only major candidate who supports tough, direct presidential diplomacy with Iran without preconditions.”

The issue resurfaced last week when President Bush, delivering a speech to Israel’s Knesset in Jerusalem, spoke of Iran, and then said: “Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along. … We have an obligation to call this what it is: the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history.”

Mr. Obama took umbrage, but the White House said the president’s remarks were aimed at all who advocate appeasement.

White House spokeswoman Dana Perino jabbed at the Democratic front-runner, saying: “I understand when you’re running for office you sometimes think the world revolves around you.”

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