Rice Criticises Britain For Not Laying Down The Law To Iran's Leaders

The Telegraph, UK:

Condoleezza Rice issued a thinly veiled rebuke to Britain and other European allies yesterday for failing to lay down the law to Iran over nuclear weapons.

Her remarks cast a chilly air over a whirlwind European tour that has otherwise been dominated by swooning coverage of the new US secretary of state, from her expensively-tailored suits to her life story as the first black woman to reach such high rank in American history.

In an interview that was aimed at domestic American television viewers, Miss Rice told Fox News that Iran should be warned it faces United Nations sanctions unless it accepts a last-minute European Union diplomatic deal on scaling back its nuclear activities.

"[The] Iranians need to hear that if they are unwilling to take the deal, really, that the Europeans are giving … then the Security Council looms," she said.

"I don't know that anyone has said that as clearly as they should to the Iranians," she added.

The remarks put pressure not only on Iran, but also on the trio of EU nations - Britain, France and Germany - behind the attempted diplomatic settlement.

Speaking later after a meeting with European commissioners in Brussels, Miss Rice struck a more emollient tone.

She preferred to stress what she called a "unity of purpose" shared by Europe and America over the need to promote a peaceful "positive" future for Iran, and for China - another source of tension - with the EU planning to lift an arms embargo on Beijing imposed after the 1989 Tiananmen massacre.

But in Teheran, President Mohammed Khatami said that no Iranian government would ever give up what he insisted was a "peaceful" nuclear programme. The president defended what he said was Iran's "clear right" to pursue uranium enrichment. He warned the EU that if Iran felt that the promises made to it were being broken, then it would walk away from the EU deal, and might adopt an unspecified "new policy", which would have "massive consequences".