Snowmail: talking to Ahmadinejad
Updated on 12 September 2007
I am talking to you from Tehran, having dropped in here directly from the Petraeus report in Washington. Quite a time difference!
So what General Petraeus said about Iran's involvement in Iraq is only one of the areas that I shall be discussing with President Ahmadinejad in a live interview tonight from the presidential palace.
Although Iran's president has said a lot over the years he has given very few interviews to the international media.
One reason he may be keen to talk tonight is that the IAEA, the world's nuclear watchdog in Vienna, has welcomed a new move by Iran to fulfil some of the agency's demands for access to their nuclear programme - a move that has received some positive reaction in Europe.
Nobody is saying that it is yet a deal, but there does seem to have been a change of atmosphere.
That cannot be said of the pollution here in the Iranian capital. Even petrol rationing in this oil rich state for the past three months has had little effect.
On my way to the presidential palace this morning I sat as I always have in bumper-to-bumper traffic on the inner city ring road that leads from our hotel to the downtown quarter where the president's offices are located.
For the rest - the sun shines, the people bustle, and there is a striking disconnect between the outward rhetoric and the inner knowledge of the severe economic difficulties here.
What does president Ahmadinejad make of Britain's withdrawal from Basra? Does he still feel is country is a target for American and Israeli bombardment? Is he seriously interested in opening a high level path towards talks with the Western World?
All this and much more at 7, live with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
