A farcical summit in Iran

THE Gillard government has ill-judged Australia's best interests by sending prime ministerial special envoy Joanna Hewitt and UN ambassador Gary Quinlan to the Non-Aligned Summit in Tehran -- the biggest international event there for three decades and one the ayatollahs are playing up for all they're worth, claiming it demonstrates that isolating Iran and imposing sanctions has failed.

Irksome though it is, its hard to argue against Iran's contention. Its accession to leadership of the so-called Non-Aligned Movement represents a significant boost for the ayatollahs when they should be against the ropes, ostracised and with sanctions biting. Instead, leaders from 120 countries -- two-thirds of the UN's membership, representing 55 per cent of the global population -- have flocked to Tehran. Two kings, 27 presidents and droves of prime ministers and foreign ministers are making Iran look like a respectable member of the international community rather than a pariah state. How Iran intends using its new role is clear. The Tehran Times, trumpeting claims oil exports are back at pre-EU sanctions levels, has spoken of forming regional and economic alliances within NAM to avoid the biting sanctions that the US and EU have imposed. Many attending countries are from the usual clique of loony fellow-travellers -- North Korea, Zimbabwe, Venezuela, Cuba and Ecuador. Others, such as Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Qatar, fear Iran's regional designs. Defying entreaties from the US, UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon is there despite Tehran's gross defiance of UN resolutions and complicity in Syria's bloodbath.

Australia, of course, is not a NAM member. Ms Hewitt and Mr Quinlan are there as observers, a job that could have been done at less cost to the taxpayer by resident ambassador Marc Innes-Brown. Foreign Minister Bob Carr says we are there to engage with other countries. More likely, the main reason is to seek votes for the dubious goal of a temporary UN Security Council seat, a race of uncertain value in which we're pitted against Finland and Luxembourg. As opposition foreign affairs spokeswoman Julie Bishop has said, its farcical for Australia to impose travel bans on Iranian officials and then despatch special envoys to participate, even as observers, in such triumphalism in Tehran. Doing so emboldens the ayatollahs. We should not be part of it.