That'll be convenient

Foreign Ministers from the UN Security Council will meet this week to discuss Iran.

Foreign ministers from the five U.N. Security Council permanent members and Germany will meet in Berlin on Thursday for talks about Iran's nuclear program, Britain's foreign secretary said Monday.

Talks in New York aimed at drafting a Security Council statement on Tehran's nuclear enrichment program stalled. The diplomats' meeting in Berlin would seek to push that process forward, Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said.

Germany's Foreign Ministry confirmed plans for the meeting.

Oh what fun those talks should be. Britain, France and Germany wasted two years dancing around with Iran, when anyone with a modicum of sense would have known Iran wasn't going to be talked out of its nuclear weapons program.

Russia and China are trying to provide cover for Iran, each for its own reasons. In the middle of all this is the United States.

It's convenient that they'll all be together in Berlin, because then the ministers can ask the Germans and the Russians about this.

Seven people are being investigated over exports of German equipment that could be useful to Iran's nuclear program, prosecutors said on Monday.

Benedikt Welfens, spokesman for the prosecutors' office in Potsdam, near Berlin, said investigators wanted to question the seven, most of them Russians, after seizing cash, equipment and records in raids on 41 sites across Germany last week.

He said they were not under arrest but declined to comment on their whereabouts.

Welfens said German-made electronic components, transformers and special cables and pumps worth 2 million to 3 million euros ($2.4 million to $3.6 million) were found to have been delivered to Iran via Russia.

Between this, and reports that Russia gave Saddam Hussein highly sensitive information regarding the US war plans ahead of the Iraq invasion, I'm hoping President Bush takes another deep look into Putin's eyes when they meet later this summer at the G8 summit. Russia is bucking to become an alternate member to the Axis of Evil.