WORLD / Middle East

Bush chides Iran for slow answer
(AP)
Updated: 2006-06-22 09:40

Iran's president said Wednesday his country would take until mid-August to respond to incentives to roll back its nuclear program, prompting President Bush to accuse Tehran of dragging its feet.

The State Department said the five countries that offered the incentives along with the United States wanted a response within weeks. But the tone of individual nations' reactions to the timeline offered by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was muted, perhaps because harsh criticism could further empower the Islamic republic's hard-line opponents of the deal.


US President George W. Bush, Austrian President Heinz Fischer and First Lady Laura Bush wait for US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, from left, at Vienna's Schwechat airport, on Wednesday, June 21, 2006. Bush and his delegation departed for Budapest on Wednesday evening. [AP]

A mid-August response would come more than two months after the presentation of the package of incentives, the cornerstone of attempts to resume deadlocked negotiations over Iran's nuclear ambitions.

"It shouldn't take the Iranians that long to analyze what's a reasonable deal," Bush told reporters in Vienna, Austria, at the annual US- European Union summit, adding that Iran's proposal "seems like an awfully long time."

Austrian Chancellor Wolfgang Schuessel said it was the "right moment for Iran to take this offer to grab it and to negotiate. ... This is the carrot. Take it."

"The time is limited," he said. "And I think we should not play with time."

In Washington, a State Department spokesman said Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns and his British, French, German, Chinese and Russian counterparts agreed that Iran should accept the offer "within weeks, not months."

Within an hour of Ahmadinejad's remarks, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and diplomats from the other five nations offering the Iran incentives had agreed by phone that they expect an answer around the time of a meeting of foreign ministers from Group of Eight nations on June 29 in Moscow, a US official said.

If Iran does not reply, that meeting would probably become a springboard for action against Iran in the UN Security Council, said the official who spoke on condition of anonymity because the diplomats' discussions were confidential.

The statements came after Ahmadinejad said in a speech broadcast live on state television that his government was still studying the incentives.

"Hopefully, we will present our views about the package by mid-August," he told a crowd in the western city of Hamedan. "We won't retreat from our rights one iota."


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