Rice Gives Iran Weeks, not Months, To Decide on Nuclear Talks - 6/2/02

[NNN0LHI]

02 June 2006

Rice Gives Iran Weeks, not Months, To Decide on Nuclear Talks
International community offers Iran incentives to abandon nuclear program



By David Shelby
Washington File Staff Writer



Washington -- Iran has weeks, not months, to respond to the proposals from the international community to resolve the diplomatic impasse over Iran's nuclear activities, according to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

“(W}e can't wait for months while Iran again says on the one hand maybe they're interested in negotiating, on the other hand maybe they're not. They need to make a choice and the international community needs to know whether negotiation is a real option or not,” Rice told reporters in Vienna, Austria, June 2.

The international community is putting forth a package of incentives and penalties aimed at persuading the Iranian government to suspend its uranium enrichment activities and return to negotiations about its nuclear program. (See related article.)

“I hope that the Iranian government will take a little time to think about the proposal that is being presented to it. This is a way out of the impasse if Iran indeed wants a way out of the impasse,” she told a CBS News reporter.

Iran has been at loggerheads with the international community over its nuclear program since January, when it ended a 14-month moratorium on its uranium enrichment activities and abandoned talks with United Kingdom, France and Germany (the EU-3).

Foreign ministers from the United Kingdom, China, France, Germany, Russia and the United States met in Vienna June 1 to draw up detailed plans for two possible courses of action with regard to Iran.

[doc mercer]

1. Iran

So Cheney must have August 13th in the Pool for when the first nuke is dropped on Tehran

[saltpoint]

2. Petulant, self-absorbed soul that she is, Condiliar applies this pressure

to Ahmadinejad because she has the power of the U.S. military behind her.

If she were a diplomat from a country with a much less aggressive military, nothing she said would earn as much as half a paragraph in world newspapers.