Region | Iran
Bush: Iran will pay the price
US President George W. Bush warns that Iran would pay a price for not freezing sensitive nuclear work as the United Nations nuclear watchdog reports that the Islamic country has not halted uranium enrichment.
- Agencies
- Published: 00:00 September 1, 2006
- Image Credit: AP
- The chief of International Atomic Energy Agency Mohammad Al Baradei (left) chats with Ali Asghar Sultanieh, Iran’s Permanent Representative to the IAEA, during a conference in Vienna.
Salt Lake City/Tehran: US President George W. Bush on Thursday warned Iran would pay a price for not freezing sensitive nuclear work.
Bush said Tehran must face "consequences" for snubbing a UN-imposed deadline to halt uranium enrichment. "The Iranian regime is pursuing nuclear weapons in open defiance of its international obligation," he told an American Legion veterans group. "It is time for Iran to make a choice."
"We've made our choice. We will continue to work closely with our allies to find a diplomatic solution, but there must be consequences for Iran's defiance, and we must not allow Iran to develop a nuclear weapon," he said.
As Bush spoke, the UN nuclear watchdog agency reported that Tehran, which says its atomic programme is purely civilian in nature, had not halted uranium enrichment programmes that could be a step towards building a nuclear bomb.
Iran said it was not fully satisfied with the report but the International Atomic Energy Agency has shown US accusations about its plans are baseless.
"Generally, although this report has not fully satisfied us, it shows that America's propaganda and politically motivated claims over Iran's nuclear programme are baseless and based on American officials' hallucinations," deputy head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organisation, Mohammad Saeedi, told IRNA.
The confidential report by the Vienna-based body said Iran had resumed enriching small amounts of uranium in recent days. The agency said lack of Iranian cooperation had blocked its probes.
"In one part of the report, it says that Iran, at one stage because of some legal ambiguities in the safeguards [agreement], had set some limitations but then it provided the IAEA with full access," Saeedi said.
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