Bush, Iran president to face off at UN

UNITED NATIONS, Sep 19: US President George W Bush and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad dueled at a distance over West Asia democracy and nuclear weapons today as both were set to address the United Nations.

Bush said he would push for sanctions against Iran over its nuclear program if Tehran continued to stall on UN demands to suspend uranium enrichment.

But with international backing for punitive measures uncertain, he stressed Washington would prefer to resolve the dispute diplomatically, allowing the European Union a little more time to seek a formula for launching negotiations.

''Now is the time for the Iranians to come to the table. Time is of the essence,'' Bush said after talks with French President Jacques Chirac.

Bush faces growing skepticism over his policies for Iran and Iraq, with UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan warning Iraq was in grave danger of descending into civil war and France, Russia and China arguing against a rush to sanctions on Iran.

The French leader stepped back from a suggestion yesterday that the major powers could open negotiations with Iran before it suspended sensitive nuclear work, which the West suspects is aimed at developing a bomb.

''There can be no talks without, beforehand ... a halt to nuclear enrichment by the Iranians,'' Chirac said.

Bush and Ahmadinejad slept at adjacent hotels and were to address the annual U.N. General Assembly session within hours of each other, but their paths did not cross.

The Iranian president, a strict Muslim, declined to attend a lunch for world leaders, including Bush, hosted by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, ostensibly because wine was on the menu. Other Muslim leaders attend but don't drink.

''CENTRAL BATTLEFIELD''

Annan used his final address to the General Assembly before leaving office after 10 years in December to plead for Security Council action to end the Arab-Israeli conflict, saying efforts to solve all other West Asian crises would face resistance while the Palestinian question remained unresolved.

''As long as the Palestinians live under occupation, exposed to daily frustration and humiliation and as long as Israelis are blown up in buses or in dance-halls, so long will passions everywhere be inflamed,'' he said.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni offered a glimmer of hope on Monday after months of violence, when they discussed a possible resumption of peace talks if a planned Palestinian national unity government accepts Israel's right to exist.

The tearful Annan won a prolonged standing ovation from the 192-member General Assembly after declaring: ''Together we have pushed some big rocks to the top of the mountain, even if others have slipped from our grasp and rolled back.'' US officials said Bush, undeterred by setbacks in Iraq and the Palestinian territories, would stress his policy of aggressively promoting democracy in West Asia and combating what he has called ''Islamic fascists''.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the international community would face a ''credibility issue'' if it did not impose sanctions against Iran after Tehran defied an Aug. 31 UN deadline to halt enrichment.

But European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana said it would be wrong to push such a resolution when the EU was making ''real progress'' in talks with Tehran.

Solana told Spanish-speaking reporters he would meet with Iran's top nuclear negotiator, Ali Larijani, in New York on the sidelines of this week's U.N. General Assembly session.

Asked in an interview with Time magazine why Iran would not suspend enrichment as a confidence-building measure, Ahmadinejad said: ''Whose confidence should be built?'' ''The world? Who is the world? The United States? The US administration is not the entire world. Europe does not account for one-twentieth of the entire world,'' he said.

Jewish organizations and exiled Iranian opposition groups protested against Ahmadinejad's visit to New York over his calls for Israel to be wiped off the map, his questioning of the Nazi Holocaust and Iran's human rights record.

REUTERS