July 24 (Bloomberg) -- When U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker sits down today for only the second round of direct U.S.-Iranian talks in 27 years, there's one issue that won't be on the agenda: the fate of four Iranian-Americans being held against their will in Tehran.

U.S. negotiators don't want the detainees to get in the way of their main priorities: stopping Iranian interference in Iraq and halting the country's nuclear program. At the same time, the Bush administration is determined to move ahead with a democracy-promotion plan that critics in Washington say helped triggered the seizure of the Americans in the first place.

It's a tricky balancing act, and some say it may be a mistake.

``The Iranian government has always believed that U.S. concerns about human rights in Iran are disingenuous and simply a pretext to put pressure on the Islamic regime,'' says Karim Sadjadpour, an Iranian-American expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington.

``If Ambassador Crocker is not allowed to mention the plight of the detained Iranian-Americans, it will certainly reinforce the Iranian government's cynical worldview.''

Haleh Esfandiari, director of Middle East studies at the Washington-based Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, was en route to the airport on Dec. 30 last year after a visit with her 93-year-old mother in Tehran when her car was stopped and her baggage and passport seized.

House Arrest

After months of interrogations under house arrest, the Ministry of Intelligence sent her to the capital's Evin prison on May 8, where her family says she is in solitary confinement. ``Obviously, if she had the least expectation that she would end up at Evin prison, she would not have gone back'' to Iran, said Shaul Bakhash, Esfandiari's husband.

Kian Tajbakhsh, who works for the George Soros Foundation's Open Society Institute, was arrested May 11 and is also now in solitary confinement at Evin. Both have been accused of spying, planning a grassroots overthrow of the government and acting against national security.

Iran has also imprisoned democracy activist Ali Shakeri, 59, who is affiliated with the University of California, Irvine, and prevented Parnaz Azima, 59, a reporter for U.S.-funded Radio Farda, from leaving the country. Both face charges of ``acting against national security.''

Words of Protest

U.S. officials are doing little but pen words of protest about the detentions, even after Iran broadcast a two-part television program last week that showed Esfandiari, 67, and Tajbakhsh, 45, purportedly admitting involvement in a plot to topple Iran's government.

Interspersed with images of their alleged ``confessions'' were shots of President George W. Bush advocating democracy, a cornerstone of U.S. policy toward Iran, especially since the administration last year very publicly requested $75 million in extra funds to spread freedom there.

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack says the detainees aren't part of the U.S.-Iran talks because ``the meetings in Baghdad are only about Iraq, and we don't think it's to anybody's benefit to start using various issues as bargaining chips.''

He says the U.S. has asked the Swiss, who have diplomatic ties with Iran, to explain that ``these people pose no threat to the Iranian regime and ask for consular access, which thus far has been denied.''

``Too Important''

McCormack also says the detentions won't affect the Bush administration's democracy-promotion program, which he says is ``too important'' to scuttle.

The administration began supporting civil society in Iran in 2004 with a $1 million program to document human-rights violations. It was set to spend $10 million in fiscal 2006, when, less than halfway through the year, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice requested the additional $75 million during testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

The Bush administration was trying to demonstrate the U.S. cares about ``issues beyond the nuclear issue,'' says Suzanne Maloney, who was on the State Department's policy-planning staff when Rice announced the funding request. Not much concern was given to ``the broader fallout,'' she says.

Congress agreed to appropriate $66.1 million of Rice's request, to be spent over two years. After clearing months of U.S. bureaucratic hurdles linked to funding restrictions, the State Department still has trouble finding people to take the cash.

Persian-Language Broadcasts

The bulk of the money, $35 million, has paid for Voice of America Persian-language radio and television broadcasts of mainly news programs. Only $16 million was spent from January through June of this year on promoting democracy.

``There's just no capacity to do this sort of thing,'' Maloney says. Few groups in Iran are equipped to spend the money, those that might be candidates are heavily monitored and many are afraid to accept U.S. funds.

Even so, Bush asked Congress in his 2008 budget request for $75 million more to support civic groups in Iran, making the country the largest target for U.S. democracy-promotion aid, followed by Cuba and Egypt, according to a Freedom House study.

``I don't see the utility of paying lip service to Iranian human-rights abuses in State of the Union speeches, yet totally ignoring the topic in face-to-face discussions,'' says Carnegie's Sadjadpour. ``The U.S. would be more effective if it lowered the volume in its public rhetoric toward Iran and raised the volume in its private dialogue.''

To contact the reporter on this story: Janine Zacharia in Washington at jzacharia@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: July 23, 2007 21:42 EDT