KRANJ, Slovenia, 11 June 2008 — US President George W. Bush and European allies yesterday threatened tougher sanctions to squeeze Iran’s finances and derail its potential pursuit of a nuclear weapon. Bush said the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran would endanger world peace.
“They can either face isolation, or they can have better relations with all of us,” Bush said of Iran’s leaders, while capping his final European Union-US summit.
The president and EU leaders embraced new financial sanctions against Iran unless it verifiably suspends its nuclear enrichment. They said Iran must fully disclose any nuclear weapons work and allow the International Atomic Energy Agency to verify that work.
Iran is also under fire for defying three sets of UN Security Council sanctions and continuing to enrich uranium — which can generate both nuclear fuel and the fissile material for the core of nuclear warheads. Iran insists that it has only civilian uses in mind for its nuclear program.
The president flatly said Iran “can’t be trusted with enrichment.” “A group of countries can send a clear message to the Iranians,” Bush said. “And that is: we’re going to continue to isolate you, we’ll continue to work on sanctions, we’ll find new sanctions if need be, if you continue to deny the just demands of a free world.”
Speaking to reporters on the lush, sun-splashed lawn near Brdo Castle, Bush also fielded questions on economic woes at home and climate change.
Bush essentially rejected the idea of possible government intervention to prop up the value of the US dollar. He said he believed in a strong-dollar policy, but that world economies will end up setting the value of the dollar.
The summit, consisting of about three hours of meetings and a working lunch, took place in a modern glass building on the vast Brdo grounds in the shadow of Slovenia’s jagged mountain peaks. The US president had a long list of issues to cover with his European counterparts, but Iran seemed to dominate.
Six world powers — the United States, Russia, China, Britain, Germany and France — are developing a package of fresh penalties and incentives aimed at reining in Tehran’s alleged atomic ambitions. The EU’s foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, plans to visit Iranian leaders soon in Tehran to appeal to them to accept negotiations over the nuclear standoff.
Bush’s national security adviser, Stephen Hadley, said that Solana will convey that message when he travels there, adding that Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad wasn’t expected to be among those consulted.
Hadley said political, economic and diplomatic benefits are available, “if they suspend the enrichment and come to the table.” Bush and the heads of the EU, a political and economic coalition of 27 countries that works to promote security and commerce across the continent, urged Tehran to stop its support for terrorist organizations destabilizing the Middle East. The statement said the United States and the EU would work to ensure that “Iranian banks cannot abuse the international banking system to support proliferation and terrorism.” The Bush administration has warned that Iran is using an array of deceptive practices to hide involvement in nuclear proliferation and terrorist activities.
It was unclear whether the freshly stated concern over Iranian banks yesterday meant that Europeans had signed on for the kind of tough measures the US favors, such as banning business with Iranian banks, or merely represented a repeat of previous calls for closer monitoring of dealings with them.
Iran’s central bank, also known as Bank Markazi, is involved in these deceptive acts, according to the US government.
Bush warned that if Iran ends up with a nuclear weapon, “the free world is going to say why didn’t we do something about it at the time? ... Now’s the time for there to be strong diplomacy.”
