US and Russia avoid mention of Iran sanctions

St Petersburg, July 15: US President George W Bush today said there was common ground with Russia on preventing Iran getting a nuclear weapon but side-stepped the issue of whether Moscow would agree to sanctions on Tehran.

World powers have agreed to discuss at the United Nations Security Council next week Iran's failure to respond to a package of incentives to stop uranium enrichment.

While Britain, France and the United States, as well as non-permanent Security Council member Germany, support economic sanctions if Iran fails to cooperate, such measures are not currently backed by veto-wielding Russia and China.

''The Iranians need to understand that we are speaking with one voice. The clearer they hear a message, the closer we will be to finding a way forward,'' Bush told a joint news conference after talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin before a G8 summit in St Petersburg.

''There is common agreement that we need to get something done at the U N and I'm confident that we'll be able to do that,'' he said.

But he refused to spell out details.

Washington and other Western powers say Iran is secretly trying to build nuclear weapons and must halt its nascent uranium enrichment programme to rebuild trust.

Tehran says its nuclear work is for civilian purposes only but for reasons of national pride it will not stop spinning the centrifuges that are enriching uranium into nuclear fuel.

Putin did not address the question of sanctions but repeated Moscow's position that nuclear proliferation, particularly in the Middle East, is not in its national interest.

He called for an approach that all negotiating partners could share.

''But it must be a balanced approach which would take into account the interests of Iranian people and their desire to develop modern high-tech industries, including nuclear,'' said Putin, host of the Group of Eight industrialised nations summit.

Russia is helping Iran build its first atomic power station at the Gulf port of Bushehr and is interested in further nuclear cooperation with the oil-rich state.

Bush said he backed a past Russian initiative to solve the crisis by controlling supplies of nuclear fuel to Iran.

''It was the Putin government that said to the Iranians: 'if you want a civilian nuclear power programme, we will support you in that. However, we will provide the fuel and we will collect the spent fuel','' he said.

''I thought it was a very innovative approach to solving the problem.'' France said this week world powers had agreed on drawing up a U N resolution telling Iran to stop sensitive atomic work. If it refused by mid-August, another resolution would be proposed under an article of the U N charter that allows for economic sanctions but not military force.

Reuters