"Some progress" in Iran nuclear talks: Bush
AFP
Date: 05-31-05
WASHINGTON (AFP) - US President George W. Bush said "some progress" had been made in trying to persuade Iran to give up its nuclear ambitions and diplomacy remained the approach in convincing North Korea to abandon its nuclear program.
"We're working with the 'EU-3' to hopefully convince the Iranians to abandon their pursuit of such a program," Bush said at a White House press conference. "And it appears we're making some progress.
"I've always believed that, obviously, the best way to solve any difficult issue is through diplomacy," the president said.
"And in this case, France, Great Britain and Germany are handling the negotiations on behalf of the rest of the world, which is those nations which are deeply concerned about Iran having a nuclear weapon," he said.
"Now, our policy is very clear on that, and that is that the Iranians violated the NPT agreement, we found out they violated the agreement, and therefore they're not to be trusted when it comes to highly enriched uranium or highly enriching uranium," the US president said.
"And therefore our policy is to prevent them from having the capacity to develop enriched uranium to the point where they're able to make a nuclear weapon," he said.
Bush added that a decision to allow Iran to apply for membership in the World Trade Organization (WTO) "seemed like a reasonable decision to make in order to advance the negotiations with our European partners."
On North Korea, Bush stressed his commitment to diplomacy and the six-party talks in persuading Pyongyang to abandon its nuclear ambitions.
"We've got a lot of work to do with the North Korean (leader Kim Jong Il) because he tends to ignore what the other five nations (China, Japan, Russia, South Korea and the United States) are saying at times," Bush said.
"But that doesn't mean we're going to stop, and can continue to press forward to making it clear that if he expects to be treated as a responsible nation that he needs to listen to the five nations involved," Bush said.
"And it's important to have China at the table, for example, saying the same thing that the United States is saying, and that is that, 'If you want to be a responsible nation get rid of your weapons programs,'" Bush said. "It's important to have Japan and South Korea and Russia saying the same thing.
"We want diplomacy to work," he added. "And we want diplomacy to be given a chance to work, and that's exactly the position of the government. And hopefully it will work. I think it will."
"It's either diplomacy or military," Bush said. "And I am for the diplomacy approach.
"And so for those who say that we ought to be using our military to solve the problem, I would say that while all options are on the table, we've got a ways to go to solve this diplomatically."
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