Spanish:
 
|
Iran sends surprise letter as major powers debate response to nuclear crisis
AFP
WASHINGTON
Petroleumworld.com 05 09 06The United States dismissed a surprise letter from Iran's hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to President George W. Bush as world powers debated how to respond to Tehran's nuclear ambitions.
The letter was the first from an Iranian leader to a US president for more than a quarter century, and suggested "new ways" to settle long-running tensions that have escalated over Iran's disputed nuclear program.
While Iran portrayed the letter as an important diplomatic initiative, US officials said it would have no effect on Washington's policy and that the move appeared to be a ploy to undermine international pressure on the nuclear issue.
US intelligence chief John Negroponte said the letter might be an attempt to shape the UN Security Council debate on the nuclear crisis.
"Certainly one of the hypotheses you'd have to examine is whether and in what way the timing of the dispatch of that letter is connected with trying in some manner to influence the debate before the Security Council," Negroponte said in Washington.
Tehran announced the letter before a meeting in New York of the foreign ministers of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, Germany and the European Union who were trying to map out a common strategy to force Iran to halt sensitive nuclear fuel work.
The ministers from the United States, Russia, China, France, Britain, Germany and the European Union failed to reach an agreement on a possible UN resolution after the talks late Monday, a US official said early on Tuesday.
The official, who asked not to be named, said there was no agreement on a US push for a resolution under Chapter Seven of the UN charter which authorizes sanctions and even the use of force.
"I think the prospects for an agreement this week are not substantially good," the official said.
While the details of Ahmadinejad's letter remained secret, Iranian government spokesman Gholam Hossein Elham told reporters that the message "goes beyond the nuclear question."
"In this letter, while analysing the world situation and finding the roots of the problems, he has proposed new ways for getting out of the existing vulnerable world situation," Elham said.
The letter was handed to the Swiss ambassador in Tehran, Philippe Welti, by Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki. The Swiss embassy represents US interests in Iran.
"The letter contains interesting things. It is written in English," a source in Ahmadinejad's office also told AFP.
Iran's senior national security official Ali Larijani told Turkey's NTV news channel that the letter could bring a diplomatic opening, but asserted Iran was not "softening" its position.
A Western diplomat in Tehran, speaking on condition of anonymity, said news of Ahmadinejad's letter was a "diplomatic bombshell" -- given that communications via the Swiss have invariably been between the Iranian foreign ministry and the US State Department, far below the presidential level.
Diplomats from both sides have also held confidential meetings, most recently following the defeat of Afghanistan's Taliban in 2001 and prior to the US-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003.
World oil prices fell Monday on news of Ahmadinejad's letter.
New York's main contract, light sweet crude for delivery in June, shed 42 cents to close at 69.77 dollars a barrel.
The price of London's Brent North Sea crude for June delivery slipped 74 cents to finish at 70.21 dollars a barrel.
Before the letter was announced, Iran had adopted a defiant stance on the nuclear issue, asserting it has a right to enrich uranium under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Security Council members are bargaining over a Franco-British draft resolution that would legally require Iran to freeze all uranium enrichment and reprocessing activities.
Bush has not ruled out taking military action against Tehran, which Washington also accuses of being the world's "leading sponsor of terror."
In London, British Prime Minister Tony Blair rejected as "utterly absurd" suggestions that he had removed Jack Straw as his foreign secretary because he had ruled out US-led military strikes against Iran.
"Any notion that it's linked to a decision about invading Iran, which incidentally we're not going to do ... is utterly absurd," Blair said at his monthly press conference.
AFP 05 09 06 0541 GMT
Copyright © 1994-2006 Agence France-Presse. All Rights Reserved.
Your
feedback is important to us!
We invite all our readers to share with us
their views and comments about this article.
Write to editor@petroleumworld.com
Any
question or suggestions, please write to:
editor@petroleumworld.com
Best
Viewed with IE
5.01+
Windows
NT 4.0, '95, '98 and ME +/ 800x600 pixels