PARIS — Iran rejected a six-nation offer of incentives to stop enriching uranium on Saturday, prompting President Bush and French President Nicolas Sarkozy to warn Tehran against proceeding toward a nuclear bomb.
“Our allies understand that a nuclear-armed Iran is incredibly destabilizing, and they understand that it would be a major blow to world peace,” Bush said at a news conference with Sarkozy at Elysee Palace.
The quickly unfolding series of events began in Tehran, where European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana relayed the offer from the United States, France, Germany, Britain, Russia and China.
Solana presented the plan — a refreshed version of a 2006 package that Iran ignored — to Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki and the country’s top nuclear negotiator, Saeed Jalili. There were no plans for Solana to see Iran’s hard-line president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Even before Solana’s meetings, however, Iran gave its pre-emptive judgment of the deal, which holds out the promise of economic, technological, educational and political rewards: dead on arrival, assuming the offer is conditioned on Iran halting its uranium enrichment, which it is.
“If suspension is included in the package, it won’t be considered at all,” the official IRNA news agency quoted Iran’s government spokesman, Gholam Hossein Elham, as saying Saturday. “The position of the Islamic Republic of Iran is clear. Preconditions can’t be raised for any halt or suspension.”
A senior State Department official said that Iran’s dismissive stance was expected and that allies will allow some time before acting, in the hope that officials there will decide to more seriously weigh the proposal.
