 Well, Ambassador Tom Pickering, very welcome to ANU and welcome to this big conference that we're hosting this week on the theme of global realities and domestic choices. What we're trying to do with this is bring together 150 of Australia's best and brightest across the corporate sector, the public sector and the research community to debate the great geopolitical and economic social policy issues of the day and to try and basically work out how we can translate good policy into good politics that's actually deliverable in this toxic environment that afflicts us, afflicts the U.S. and so many other countries. But one of the very specific issues that will obviously be coming up is the situation in the Middle East and the way in which the world should be reacting to this current meltdown. You've been ambassador of the U.S. to Israel, to Jordan, to the UN and half the rest of the world speak half a dozen languages fluently, the grand old man in many ways of the American diplomatic system. What are you going to tell us about the Middle East? Gareth, the Middle East is in tough shape and there are ways and pass through this particular set of problems. They're going to be in diplomacy, they're going to be in tough diplomacy, in deep engagement. There's going to be ups and downs in the Middle East and anybody here in Australia, in the United States who's engaged in business, who's looking at the future of government, in my view has got to feel that they know something about what's happening in that particular region of the world, what the possibilities are, what they ought to in their own interests should be, what they ought to be saying to their governments in their own interest and in the future interest obviously of the business climate in that part of the world. It's a huge and important segment of the world economy and it's impossible to ignore it. If I were to tell you that I thought it was all easy as pie, I wouldn't be here, you wouldn't have me here and it wouldn't mean anything. What's the, to you as the biggest single problem in the Middle East? Is it the continuing inability of the Arab-Israeli Palestinian issue to be resolved? Is it the meltdown in Syria and Iraq? Is it the catastrophe we're witnessing unfold in Egypt? You know the biggest single problem is the interlinkage of malign issues and how they influence each other and the biggest single advantage is if we can begin to get some breakthroughs we may be able to build some synergy into the solution process interestingly. You've been very closely involved in the back rooms of the Iran nuclear negotiations. Are you an optimist that that one can be resolved this year? Yeah I'm an optimist but probably this year is tough. I got news this morning that the two most significant negotiators for the US Bill Burns and Jake Sullivan are going to go and spend two weeks in Vienna with the Iranians and they have an agreement with the Iranians to try to move that process. It's going to be a marathon negotiating session but it's a bright spot because suddenly have wakened up to the notion that now it is no longer possible to have itinerant negotiators meeting for two days at a time hoping to achieve breakthroughs. This is real tough diplomacy nose to the grindstone that perhaps look only you would know this as well as anybody in this world but we all know from business from from diplomacy how hard it is to get to that final deal and how much you have to be in the room together day in day out working that set of problems. Tom last question if we do get a deal in Iran how on earth is it going to be delivered to those crazies of yours in the US Congress? It's going to be delivered because in effect in the end even those crazies will see it's in the national interest and enough of the smart guys will know in fact that this is the kind of breakthrough that we need but it requires a triumph in my view over rationality and logic over what I would call political polarization and the president has to be at the center of that but he's already shown on this issue that he wants to be at the center. Well I guess this is a taster of the sort of thing we're going to be talking about a number of different ways over the next few days and ANU hopefully and the Crawford School of Public Policy will be the outfit that can bring this together and get a really really serious policy debate going in Australia and a whole variety of these issues which frankly we're not seeing much of from the political class.