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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: DuckTapeSunroof who wrote (748462)	8/31/2006 5:41:12 PM
From: Hope Praytochange	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769667

Bush Says Iran Will Face Consequences for U.N. Defiance By Daniela Deane Washington Post Staff Writer Thursday, August 31, 2006; 5:16 PM President Bush said today there "must be consequences" for Iran's "defiance and delay" in responding to U.N. demands it stop enriching uranium. Speaking on the day of the U.N. Security Council's deadline for Tehran to stop such work or face economic sanctions, Bush delivered one of his strongest statements to the Iranian regime. In a speech to thousands of veterans at the American Legion's national convention in Salt Lake City, Bush blamed Tehran for aggravating the situation in both Iraq and Lebanon with its material support of extremist groups in both countries. He also accused Iran of denying basic human rights to millions of Iranians. "We know the depth of suffering that Iran's sponsorship of terrorists has brought," Bush said. "And we can imagine how much worse it would be if Iran were allowed to acquire nuclear weapons." "There must be consequences and we must not allow Iran to develop a nuclear weapon," Bush said. He said the world faces a "grave threat from the radical regime in Iran." A report issued today by the International Atomic Energy Agency says Iranian nuclear specialists began enriching a new batch of uranium on Aug. 24, just a week ahead of the deadline. The IAEA wrote in its report that "Iran has not suspended it's enrichment related activities." It also said that a lack of cooperation on the part of Iran had made it impossible to confirm whether the nuclear program was exclusively "peaceful." Bush has long criticized Iran, once calling it part of the "axis of evil." Tehran and Washington have been sparring for three years over the nuclear program that Iran says it built to produce energy but which the Bush administration believes is a cover for nuclear weapons work. IAEA inspectors have been trying, without success, to determine the true nature of the program, which Iran kept secret for 18 years. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said his country will not buckle under international pressure. "Iranians will not surrender to forceful talk, aggression and deprivation of their rights," Ahmadinejad said today in a speech carried live on Iranian state television, news agencies reported. Later in the day, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton, said the Security Council should agree to new sanctions against Iran, saying the IAEA report was "ample evidence of Iran's defiance," according to news agency reports. "Not only has Iran not suspended uranium enrichment, it's accelerated it," Bolton said to reporters at the United Nations in New York, according to news agencies. He said the five permanent members of the Security Council agreed a month ago "to seek sanctions, and the conditions that they laid down have now come to pass." He said, though, that new sanctions were not likely immediately because the United States will wait to make any specific proposals until after meetings scheduled in Europe next week. In a wide-ranging and lengthy speech that also covered Afghanistan, Lebanon and Iraq, Bush repeated his assertion that U.S. troops will not leave Iraq "until victory is achieved." He said the security of the "civilized world" depended on victory in the "war on terror," which in turn required victory in Iraq. "It will be difficult and it will require more sacrifice," he said, but it will be a "powerful triumph in the ideological struggle of the 21st century." He said pulling out of Iraq now would be "absolutely disastrous" and said opponents of the war who are calling for a pull-out should understand the consequences of such a move. "Many of these folks are sincere and they're patriotic but they could be -- they could not be more wrong," Bush said. "We would be handing Iraq over to our worst enemies -- Saddam's former henchmen, armed groups with ties to Iran, and al-Qaeda terrorists from all over the world who would suddenly have a base of operations far more valuable than Afghanistan under the Taliban." He said these groups "would have a new sanctuary to recruit and train terrorists at the heart of the Middle East, with huge oil riches to fund their ambitions." The Salt Lake City speech is the first of a series of speeches Bush plans over 20 days centered on the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. The speeches are part of a new administration campaign intended to rebuild support for the war in Iraq with Bush and his surrogates accusing the opposition of aiming to appease terrorists and cut off funding for troops on the battlefield, charges that many Democrats say distort their stated positions. Staff writer Dafna Linzer contributed to this report.