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Bush reserves judgment on Iran's president-elect

IRNA - Islamic Republic News Agency

London, June 30, IRNA
Iran-US Bush
US President George Bush indicated Thursday that he was reserving judgment of his views on the election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as Iran's new president.

"Time will tell," Bush said, despite being asked a leading question in an interview with the Times newspaper on whether he was "the kind of guy you can the US and its European allies can really do business" being a "ringleader" of students who took US hostages.

"The first interface, serious interface with the west will be on the EU-3 discussions about the nuclear ambitions of Iran," he told the paper.

On Monday, British Prime Minister Tony Blair expressed hope that Iran's president-elect will be a "willing partner" in the continuing EU negotiations to reach long term arrangements on his country's nuclear programme.

In his rare interview with a UK daily, Bush suggested that the US and the EU had a "common goal" in not wanting Iran to develop nuclear weapons.

"I want to thank the foreign ministers of Great Britain, German and France for working in that collaborative way to send that constant, persistent message to the Iranians," he said, while indicating a further shift in US policy.

"Our position is very clear. And that is, is that they should not be able to develop the technologies that will enable the enrichment of uranium which will ultimately yield a nuclear weapon," the US president said.

American policy, unlike the Europeans, has previously been directed against Iran building any nuclear facilities to generate power.

Bush also linked that US policy on Iran was influenced by the Zionist lobby, claiming that Tehran's second objective "is the destruction of Israel."
But he indicated that his administration had moved towards a more multilateral approach towards Iran, saying that "in diplomacy, it's important to establish common goals."
"Once you establish a common goal and common objective, it then makes it much easier to work together to achieve diplomatic ends.

Our common goal is that Iran should not have a nuclear weapon," the US president said.

With regard to Ahmadinejad's election, he told the Times that "the first test as to, as you said, whether or not he can relate to the West will be on this issue."
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