After weeks of debate inside the Bush administration, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice announced Wednesday that the United States is ready to join direct talks with Iran - if Iran first suspends its uranium-enrichment activities.

Saying the decision "gives the negotiation track new energy," Dr. Rice characterized the redirection of US policy as President Bush's determination "to do everything we can to find a diplomatic solution to the nuclear problem."

The announcement came on the eve of Rice's trip to Europe to nail down details of an international carrots-and-sticks approach to Iran. It appeared designed to send several key signals:

• That Iran is not Iraq, and that the US is determined to exhaust diplomatic measures to resolve the standoff.

• That the US will take tough, controversial steps to form a common front with its European allies.

• That the US expects reciprocal tough steps from other key international players involved in the tussle - specifically Russia and China - if Iran fails to suspend the uranium-enrichment and reprocessing elements of its nuclear program.

As outlined by Rice, the new plan calls for the US to join the so-called EU-3 - the European Union countries Britain, France, and Germany - in talks with Iran if Tehran verifiably suspends uranium enrichment.

The decision follows not just internal administration debate, but also weeks of meetings with European leaders and officials who had been telling US representatives that the diplomatic offensive was unlikely to go forward if the US was not at the negotiating table.

In addition, Mr. Bush has been on the telephone in recent days with his counterparts on the United Nations Security Council, in particular Russia's President Vladimir Putin, to press the importance of including "sticks" in any diplomatic overture to Tehran.

Though Iran had yet to officially respond by press time, the government of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad signaled in recent months that it is ready to engage the US in dialogue. European allies and officials of the International Atomic Energy Agency have long made clear that, with such a high-stakes game of nuclear "chicken" apparently under way, the US would eventually be forced to engage Tehran directly.

"However we look at it, [the US step] is positive. But will it get somewhere? I don't know," says Shirzad Bozorgmehr, a senior editor of the English-language Iran News in Tehran. "It is significant, but there are several preconditions that Iran already said it would not agree to ... such as suspending enrichment."

Rice's comments could be the "beginning of some discussion, however contentious," says Mr. Bozorgmehr, and they follow delivery of a less-than-elegant, unprecedented letter from the Iranian president to Bush on May 8.

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