Savouring the taste of buffet diplomacy

The setting was an 18th-century villa in the Swiss countryside and the exchange took place during an ordinary cold buffet lunch - but as the US diplomat William Burns and his Iranian opposite number Saeed Jalili separated from the group for a tete a tete, the symbolism was immense.

In diplomatic parlance these encounters are called "bilaterals", and they happen all the time. For three decades however, they have not happened, at least officially, between Americans and Iranians.

The chat was reportedly good natured, lasting 40 minutes. Diplomats were cagey about the detail, but they did say that Burns had reinforced President Barack Obama's tough message about Iran's nuclear programme and his offer of dialogue.

The contrast between the two men could not be greater. Burns is an unflappable career diplomat, nicknamed the "food processor" because he is such a smooth operator. Jalili is 44, lives in a modest house in Tehran, and drives an old car.

But Iran's point man in the nuclear stand-off with the West is no humble civil servant. The former university lecturer is an extremely close associate of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and has been identified (by the former President Ali Rafsanjani) as one of four chief architects of Ahmadinejad's election victory in June and the vicious crackdown on dissidents and reformists that followed.

Jalili is relatively young to hold the key position of chief nuclear negotiator, but his promotion was no accident. He was personally parachuted into the job by Ahmadinejad two years ago, a reflection of his standing in the hardline conservative cabal that surrounds the President.

He is ultra-religious, even by Iranian standards, and staff in the Foreign Ministry, where Jalili rose to prominence, were surprised by the standards of observance he expected of his underlings.

Like Ahmadinejad, Jalili is rumoured to be a firm believer in the Mahdi, the so-called Twelfth or "Hidden" Imam, who according to doctrine will return to save his followers in a time of cosmic chaos.

Western diplomats, used to the smooth, urbane Ali Larijani, were horrified by the hardline views the younger man brought to the negotiating table. At a meeting last year Jalili regaled his Western counterparts with a two-hour history of British and American perfidy, from the 1953 coup that brought the Shah to power, through to the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war.

Yesterday, perhaps mollified by winning face time with the man from Washington, his speech to the seven-nation talks wound up much sooner.

- INDEPENDENT