Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Wednesday that the U.S. is trying to line up allies to impose economic sanctions on Iran in the event that the U.N. Security Council fails to do so.
“While we are pursuing the course in the Security Council ? and there will be action in the Security Council ? we?re also looking at what like-minded states may wish to do on the financial side if the Security Council is not able to act,” Rice told Fox News.
By raising the possibility of inaction by the Security Council, Rice was acknowledging the difficulties of getting Russia and China to endorse economic sanctions against Iran. As permanent members of the Security Council, both have veto power over any U.S.-led action against the country.
Rice also acknowledged that the deadline for punishing Iran for its alleged pursuit of nuclear weapons has slipped. The Security Council originally gave Tehran the month of April to stop enriching uranium or face sanctions.
But that deadline came and went without action. Ten days into May, Rice said it would take several more weeks to reach international consensus on how the Security Council can “send a strong message” to Tehran.
“We have some tactical differences on how that message might be sent, and so our allies, particularly the Europeans, thought that it would be a good idea to continue for a couple of weeks,” she said. “We felt that a couple of weeks to try and bring everybody together was not too much to pay.”
Elsewhere, President Bush dismissed a letter from Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad this week.
“It looks like it did not answer the main question that the world is asking, and that is, ?When will you get rid of your nuclear program?? ” Bush said in an interview with Florida newspapers.
“Britain, France, Germany, coupled with the United States and Russia and China, have all agreed that the Iranians should not have a weapon or the capacity to make a weapon,” he said. “There is a universal agreement toward that goal and the letter didn?t address that question.”
Rice described the 18-page letter as “a kind of philosophical, historical and indeed religious attack on the president?s policies and on American policy, and indeed on our very system of government.”
“But the sad thing is that it didn?t take the opportunity to actually address the problems that the international community is concerned about: the nuclear ambitions of Iran, Iran?s activities with terrorism,” she said. “None of that is addressed in this letter.”
