To the editor:

The Iraq Study Group has recommended to the president, among other suggestions, a commencement of diplomacy with other concerned countries, including Iran and Syria. The president resists this option, as he has mostly not negotiated with opponents in the past. Why he only wants to negotiate with leaders he considers friends is open to question. Nevertheless, he has led the United States and the Middle East oil-producing areas into a situation where regional war is a possibility if he doesn’t take opponents’ concerns into account.

War in the Middle East – for instance involving Iraq, Iran and Saudi Arabia – will send oil prices spiraling and generally disrupt U.S. and probably world economies. As little as he likes to do it, George W. Bush must get negotiations under way with various countries that also have an interest in Iraq. Some of those interests are in the oil (China, United States, et al.) and some are religious (the Saudis and other Sunnis and the Iranian Shiites). As James Baker, co-chair of the Iraq Study Group emphasized, “you talk with your enemies.”

The situation would have benefited from such negotiations four years ago. That would have been negotiating from a situation of strength and flexibility.

Mark Larson,

Lawrence