Posted on 09/19/2006 7:08:34 PM PDT by familyop
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - President Bush accused Iran's rulers on Tuesday of using their nation's wealth to fund terrorists and nuclear arms research but said he preferred to resolve differences with Tehran diplomatically before resorting to sanctions.
In a speech to the United Nations rebuffing critics of his muscular promotion of democracy in the Middle East, Bush assailed the leaders of Iran and Syria while appealing to their peoples over their heads.
In a week of Muslim protests over Pope Benedict's criticism of their faith, the U.S. leader said the West was not hostile to Islam, contrary to "propaganda and conspiracy theories."
"Your rulers have chosen to deny you liberty and to use your nation's resources to fund terrorism and fuel extremism and pursue nuclear weapons," Bush told Iranians.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has defended his country's right to peaceful nuclear technology, was not in the chamber, but he was expected to respond in his own address to the U.N. General Assembly later.
"Iran must abandon its nuclear weapons ambitions," Bush declared after telling reporters he would push for sanctions if Tehran continued to stall on U.N. demands to suspend uranium enrichment, which the West suspects is aimed at making a bomb.
But with international backing for punitive measures shaky, he stressed Washington would prefer to resolve the dispute diplomatically, giving the European Union a little more time to seek a formula for launching negotiations.
EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana said on Monday it would be wrong to push for a sanctions resolution when the Europeans were making "real progress" in talks with Tehran. He said he would meet Iran's top nuclear negotiator, Ali Larijani, in New York later this week.
'FALSE ASSUMPTION'
Bush said Syria's leaders had made their country "a crossroads for terrorism" and told Syrians: "In your midst, Hamas and Hizbollah are working to destabilize the region, and your government is turning your country into a tool of Iran."
The U.S. president vigorously rebutted critics, including many opposition Democrats at home, who argue his drive for democracy has destabilized the Middle East, from Iraq to the Palestinian territories, empowered Islamists and spread chaos.
"This argument rests on a false assumption: that the Middle East was stable to begin with," Bush argued.
Yet he faced growing skepticism over his policies on Iran and Iraq, with U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan warning Iraq is in grave danger of civil war while France, Russia and China argue against a rush to sanctions against Iran.
French President Jacques Chirac said he opposed setting any deadline for sanctions since dialogue should have priority.
After meeting Bush, he said they fully agreed on a sequence for launching negotiations with Iran, under which major powers would pledge not to seek sanctions for the duration of talks while Iran would suspend enrichment while negotiations lasted.
In contrast to Bush, Chirac told the assembly: "We do not aim to call regimes into question."
Bush and Ahmadinejad slept at adjacent hotels and were to address the annual U.N. General Assembly session within hours of each other, but their paths did not cross.
The Iranian president, a strict Muslim, declined to attend a lunch for world leaders, including Bush, hosted by U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, ostensibly because wine was on the menu. Other Muslim leaders attended but did not drink.
Asked in an interview with Time magazine why Iran would not suspend enrichment as a confidence-building measure, Ahmadinejad said: "Whose confidence should be built?"
"The world? Who is the world? The United States? The U.S. administration is not the entire world. Europe does not account for one-twentieth of the entire world," he said.
Annan used his final address to the General Assembly before leaving office after 10 years in December to plead for Security Council action to end the Arab-Israeli conflict, saying efforts to solve all other Middle East crises would face resistance while the Palestinian question remained unresolved.
A tearful Annan won a prolonged standing ovation from the 192-member General Assembly after declaring: "Together we have pushed some big rocks to the top of the mountain, even if others have slipped from our grasp and rolled back."
(Additional reporting by Steve Holland and Evelyn Leopold)
But the NY Slimes just told us he was being "moderate". Seems the Democrat Party talking points have been slow getting out tonight to tell the Junk Media how to report this.
Ah, well that's the article that slams Bush.
To me it looks like Bush has figured out that Iran will not get the bomb until he's out office, and he's handing the problem off to his successor.
Good luck, Hillary.
Crying all the way to the bank...
Iran is making nukes , there is NOTHING to talk about ,They are stalling for time . Any half sharp 7 year old could see that . Why are out leaders so stupid to the obvious ? Iran lies , plain and simple. They have been faking out europe for years using the same old trick . Now France is going to broker yet another round of negotions. Are they for real ? Iran buys a few more months to build WMDs . Ahmadinejad must go home and laugh his ass off over how easy it is to fool our leaders over and over and over again.
I noticed that too.
And there is some reason we should not?
I think most politicians could care less what Americans are thinking once they get in office. That goes for both sides.
once they get in office the only time they think of the people who put them there is when another election rolls around the rest of the time it/s what they can get from the office they were elected to
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