Sunday, January 22, 2006

U.S. under-secretary, Burns: Iran will be taught a lesson

 US undersecretary of state calls Iran ‘a world threat’
* Calls Iran’s N-programme outrageous
* Admits ‘complexities’ in India-US talks

By Iftikhar Gilani

NEW DELHI: US Undersecretary of State R Nicolas Burns has called Iran “a threat to world peace” and vowed to “teach it a lesson”.

He said this in a press conference following talks with Indian Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran on Friday.

Iran has “crossed so many international red lines, that it has to know that will be a penalty to be paid,” he said.

The two countries, however, held divergent positions on Iran. While Burns said that Iran should be referred to the UN Security Council, Saran maintained that New Delhi would prefer the matter resolved within the purview of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

Saran said that India was committed to finding an amicable solution to the Iran issue. “We have close, civilised relations with Iran, and would not like to see any confrontation. International consensus needs to be evolved on the issue,” he said.

Terming as “outrageous” Iran’s comparison of its nuclear programme with India, Burns said that Russia, China and the EU-3 – Germany, UK and France – agreed that Iran had “crossed the line it should not have crossed”, although the views of all these countries were not identical the US position on the issue. “They were outrageous remarks ... On the one hand, you have a country that has never been a proliferator while on the other, you have a regime in Iran which ... for 18 years conducted secret nuclear research,” said Burns.

Meanwhile, Burns admitted that there were difficulties ahead in formulating an agreement on nuclear cooperation with India, but said these difficulties would be removed in time.

He said that the framework for an agreement has been established but was far from completion, as it envisaged “overturning” both the US and international law. “There’s no question that we have made some progress over the last six months, but much progress has still to be made.”

“We have concluded (that) we need to discuss this in greater detail in the coming days, and this dialogue will continue,” Saran said.
 
 
Bush is the greatest threat to world peace, according to the rest of the world, you idiot.

No comments: