PROSPECTS for a serious attempt at resolving the seven year dispute between the EU and Iran over the death threat to the writer Salman Rushdie have been significantly enhanced by the assumption by Ireland of the EU Presidency.
Sources close to Mr Rushdie say they believe that Ireland is well placed to act as an honest broker in a deal as it has had a good relationship with Iran and does not carry the legacy of a colonial past in the region. Indeed, Ireland had notable success in negotiating the release of the Beirut hostage, Mr Brian Keenan.
Contacts have been established between the Department of Foreign Affairs and Mr Rushdie's supporters, who also point to strongly supportive meetings in the past between the author and the Taoiseach, Mr Bruton, the Tanaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Spring, and the President, Mrs Robinson.
In Tehran last week, a statement from the official news agency IRNA welcomed the Irish presidency, saying that Dublin had "an ideal opportunity" to resolve the dispute. Ireland had excellent relations with Iran, the agency said, and "an ideal opportunity to improve Deputies with Iran based on depoliticising the row over the apostate author Salman Rushdie."
But the challenge will not be easy. Current talks on an EU diplomatic initiative to exchange letters between the EU and Tehran had been deadlocked over an Iranian insistence on referring in its letter to the religious irreversibility of the fatwa.
Tehran is willing, however, to say that it does not intend to carry out the death threat itself or to encourage others to do so, but insists that the issue of the fatwa is a religious matter unrelated to state policy.
Iran has been suggesting that only Britain out of the EU 15 has been holding up the exchange of letters, but a spokesman for the Department of Foreign Affairs confirmed last week that Ireland also has difficulties with the current proposed wording.
And when the Dutch Foreign Minister, Mr Hans van Mierlo, met Mr Rushdie on June 24th he also made it clear that he "shared his conviction that the EU should not agree to any phrasing that would seem to accept the death verdict over Rushdie.
In a letter to EU foreign ministers on June 21st, Article 19, the international centre against censorship which has been closely associated with Mr Rushdie, warns that the current text "would provide an unmistakable signal to Iran that the principle of the fundamental right to freedom of expression is conceded" and "also establish the dangerous precedent of cultural relativism that the right to freedom of speech can be abnegated by religious dictate."
Critical to the dispute is Iran's insistence that its interpretation of Islamic law has been endorsed by the 52 nation Islamic Organisation Conference, a contention strongly contested by Mr Rushdie's supporters. They say that although the conference has condemned the novel as blasphemous it has never upheld the fatwa or expressed a view on its irreversibility.
Yet with Iran increasingly signalling its desire to defuse the tension and restore relations with the EU, sources believe that a formula acceptable to both sides should not be beyond the wit of creative diplomacy.
Iran is particularly concerned at present about US legislation which threatens fines against international companies, many of them European, trading with Tehran, a move strongly opposed by the EU.
And Iran is well aware of growing doubts within the EU at the effectiveness of the Union's policy of "critical dialogue" with the country, But at the EU, unlike the US, is and a resolution of the would certainly secure the dialogue.
The first formal meeting between Mr Spring, as president of the EU troika, the Union's diplomatic arm, and the Iranian Foreign Minister, Mr Velayati, is not scheduled until the September session of the UN, although diplomatic contact is continuous.
Reports in Dublin that a troika visit to Tehran is planned soon are dismissed by the Department of Foreign Affairs and the Commission, although the Minister for Agriculture, Mr Yates, is understood to be keen to see a mission to unblock the market for Irish beef.
The fatwa against Salman Rushdie was issued by the Ayatollah Khomeini, Iran's religious leader, in February 1989, over the publication of The Satanic Verses.
In recent months Mr Rushdie has emerged more frequently from hiding, but sources close to him insist they have conclusive evidence that Islamic militants are still gathering intelligence on his movements and point to the fact that an Iranian national is currently held in Germany on suspicion of involvement in the murder of an Iranian dissident in Paris.
