US talks offer just propaganda, says Iran
Iran has dismissed as propaganda a US offer to join face-to-face talks over its disputed nuclear programme if Tehran suspends its atomic activities.
Both President George Bush and secretary of state Condoleezza Rice made the offer yesterday, using similar language that was presented as a shift in US tactics meant to offer the Iranians a last chance to avoid punishing sanctions.
“Our message to the Iranians is that, one, you won’t have a weapon; and two, that you must verifiably suspend any programmes at which point we will come to the negotiating table to work on a way forward,” Bush said.
Rice said the offer, made before she left for meetings in Europe on Iran, was “to underscore our commitment to a diplomatic solution and to enhance prospects for success”. The mention of verifiability, however, would seem difficult, because Iran long ago barred inspections by the United Nations’ watchdog agency.
Rice said that while the US was willing to join talks between European nations and Iran, which are now suspended, it was also helping to prepare a package of sanctions that Tehran could face should it decline the new offer.
“We’re prepared to go either way,” Rice said
But the Iranian news agency said Iran accepted only proposals and conditions that were in the nation’s interest.
“Halting enrichment definitely doesn’t meet such interests,” IRNA said. “Given the insistence by Iranian authorities on continuing uranium enrichment, Rice’s comments can be considered a propaganda move.”
The US has had no diplomatic ties with Iran and few contacts at all with its government since Islamic radicals took over the US embassy in 1979 and held diplomats for more than a year.
The US has been under mounting pressure from European allies to join talks.
At the White House yesterday, President Bush said: “I believe that it’s important that we solve this issue diplomatically, and my decision today says that the US is going to take a leadership position in solving this issue.”
Rice is meeting foreign ministers from the other permanent UN Security Council members in Vienna today to complete work on a package of economic incentives and threats of sanctions to be presented to Tehran. That package would be on the table in any new talks involving the US.
The Bush administration is convinced Russia and China, both permanent security council members, would support sanctions or other harsh measures if new talks should fail to persuade Iran to abandon nuclear efforts that the West fears could lead to a bomb, a senior administration official said.
The administration has given arms-length support to European efforts to bargain with Iran, but has also been the prime mover for sanctions or other tough UN action. Russia and China, Iran’s commercial allies on the council, have so far blocked that path.
At the United Nations, the ambassadors from China and Russia said the US announcement shoed it was more serious about finding a diplomatic solution to the dispute.
Chinese ambassador Wang Guangya said, however, that Washington’s offer to talk to Iran should be unconditional.
Iran suspended enrichment activities while talks were active with the Europeans last year but resumed and stepped up the programme this spring.
Uranium enrichment can led either to a bomb or to nuclear power production, and Iran has so far insisted that it will not make any deal that involves giving up that technology.
