Rice: Iran diplomats plan shelved

         US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Wednesday that a decision whether to send US diplomats to Iran for the first time in three decades will be left to President-elect Barack Obama's administration. She said setting up a diplomatic outpost, or interest section, in Iran remains viable, but it is now too late for President George W. Bush's foreign policy team to move ahead with the plan that was floated at midyear. "At this late moment, I think it is probably better that this decision be left to the next administration," Rice told reporters at a State Department news conference. Rice said the Bush administration had hoped to go ahead with it, but a number of developments, including Russia's war with Georgia in August, made it impractical to do so. "We have continued to pursue how that might go forward, but, frankly, the point at which we most likely would have done it, we were right in the middle of the Georgia-Russia conflict and then a number of other international events I think just made it difficult to do," she said, without elaborating. The Associated Press reported in early October that the administration had shelved the idea and would leave it for its successor in part due to the impact it might have had on the US presidential election as well as the suspicion that it might be an unmerited reward to Iran as it continued to defy international demands to halt suspect nuclear activity. (23,10)