US 'committed' to Iran talks
2006-04-02 13:09
London - US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice, in an interview broadcast on Sunday in Britain, said the United States remains "committed" to pursuing a diplomatic solution to the Iran nuclear crisis.
Rice, who paid a surprise visit on Sunday to Baghdad with British foreign secretary Jack Straw after three days in Britain, said Iran could not be compared to the Iraq situation.
"We believe that diplomacy has a chance to work, but we are going to work with whom ever we can, in whatever form we can, diplomatically, to try and bring the Iranians around," she told ITV television.
"Iran is not Iraq. I know that's what's on people's minds (but) the circumstances are different."
"We don't have 12 years of Security Council resolutions, a case in which a state attacked its neighbour, tried to annex its neighbour, as it (Iraq) did with Kuwait where we were still in a war after the armistice of 1991."
That said, Rice reiterated Washington's refusal to rule out military action if Iran refuses to bow to international pressure over its suspected development of nuclear weapons.
"The president of the United States doesn't take his options off the table," she said. "We are committed to a diplomatic course because we believe that a diplomatic course can work."
Straw, also interviewed on ITV's "Jonathan Dimbleby" political talk show, said Russia - the most reluctant of the five UN Security Council permanent members to come down hard on Iran - was in a difficult situation.
"Russia is anxious about Iran," he said. "It's on its borders, they've got thousands of people working there."
"They are worried about the possibility of the Iranians stirring up trouble for them, but they also share our high suspicions that Iran may be using its civil nuclear capability to develop a nuclear weapon and they do not want that."
- AFP