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."