WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States and Europe launched a coordinated push on Friday to get Iran to abandon its suspected nuclear arms program by offering economic incentives as a carrot and possible U.N. action as a stick.
Washington announced it would allow Iran to begin talks on joining the World Trade Organization and would consider allowing it to buy commercial aircraft spare parts, in a major policy shift requested by the Europeans.
In return, Britain, France and Germany said they would haul Tehran before the U.N. Security Council if it resumed uranium enrichment and nuclear reprocessing activities, which could be used to develop an atomic bomb.
In Vienna, Sirus Naseri, a senior Iranian negotiator in nuclear talks with the European Union, dismissed the U.S. offer as “too insignificant to comment about.”
The U.S. decision marks a major policy shift by Washington, which had previously refused to offer such incentives to Iran.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice cast the U.S. move as a way to support the European diplomacy and she ruled out any further U.S. gestures to Iran for now.
“This is giving to the Europeans more cards to play in their negotiations with the Iranians,” Rice told Reuters. “This is about unifying the international community so that it’s the Iranians who are isolated, not the United States.”
“The Europeans have a strategy which is to show the Iranians that if they are prepared to live up to their international obligations there is an alternative path to confrontation and … a path to a better future,” Rice said.
The joint US-EU strategy was a first fruit of President Bush’s trip to Europe last month and appeared to bridge, at least for now, years of disagreement over whether to engage or isolate the Islamic republic.
‘SPEAKING WITH ONE VOICE’ “I am pleased that we are speaking with one voice with our European friends, I look forward to working with our European friends to make it abundantly clear to the Iranian regime that the free world will not tolerate them having a nuclear weapon,” Bush said.
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