Western powers will wait a ”couple of weeks” before pressing tough United Nations action against Iran and offer new incentives for it to renounce its controversial nuclear activities, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said on Wednesday.
Rice spoke after two days of intensive consultations by the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany on an approach to Tehran’s suspected effort to build a nuclear bomb.
”We agreed that we will continue to seek a [UN] Security Council resolution, but that we would wait for a couple of weeks while the Europeans design an offer to the Iranians that would make clear that they have a choice that would allow them to have a civil nuclear programme,” she told ABC television.
But the chief US diplomat said Washington was not abandoning efforts to seek a forceful UN Security Council resolution on Iran, despite staunch opposition from Russia and China to any punitive measures.
”We are all in agreement that the Security Council has got to send a very strong message to Iran that it can’t continue to defy the international community. And that’s what we’re going to do,” Rice said. ”And we felt that waiting a couple of weeks is the way to allow diplomatic options to be fully pursued.”
Rice held more than three hours of talks with her counterparts from the other four permanent members of the Security Council, plus Germany and the European Union, on Monday.
Their political directors followed up on Tuesday and were expected to meet again in Europe next week.
Rice underscored Washington’s dismissal of Iran’s surprise letter to President George Bush.
”That is not a serious diplomatic overture,” Rice told NBC television, adding that there was ”nothing in it that suggested a way out of the nuclear stalemate”.
The letter from Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Monday was the first from an Iranian leader to a US president in more than a quarter of a century, and called for ”new ways” to settle long-running tensions that have reached a new peak over the nuclear dispute.
Iran argues it has the right to nuclear technology for civilian purposes but the US maintains it could be concealing efforts to build a nuclear bomb.
Rice stressed that ”absence of communication is not the problem with Iran”.
”What is to be gained if Iran is not prepared to live up to its obligations” to the international community, she asked.
It was critical for Iran not to have nuclear weapons, Rice said.
But ”more importantly, no one even wants Iran to have the technology on its territory that could lead to” weapons building, Rice said.
Though ”there will be action in the Security Council”, Rice reiterated that the US could pursue sanctions outside the UN Security Council ”on the financial side”. She did not give details.
”Iran can either defy the international community … or accept a path” toward verification, Rice said. — AFP
