Bush on the defensive
2006-03-21 21:12
Washington - President George W Bush said on Tuesday that a nuclear-armed Iran could "blackmail" the world and warned of more tough fighting in Iraq as he scrambled to defend his record at a White House press conference.
Confronting record low opinion poll ratings, Bush refused on Tuesday to say whether American troops would be completely out of Iraq by 2009, when he ends his second term.
"That is an objective. That will be decided by future presidents and future governments of Iraq," he told reporters who bombarded the US leader with questions on Iraq and mounting tensions with Iran over its nuclear programme.
It would be "unacceptable" for Iran to "spread sectarian violence" in Iraq or provide parts that could be used for bomb attacks in Iraq, he said.
Bush also reaffirmed US warnings about Iran's nuclear activities, which Washington says hides an effort to build an atomic bomb.
"If the Iranians were to have a nuclear weapon, they could blackmail the world. If the Iranians were to have a nuclear weapon, they could proliferate," Bush said.
But the US leader also reaffirmed that he wants a diplomatic solution to the Iran crisis and that the US government would continue to let Britain, France and Germany lead international talks with Iran.
Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the United States have been holding talks in New York this week on drawing up a strategy to counter the Iranian programme.
"Our negotiations with Iran on the nuclear weapons will be led by the EU-3 and that is important because the Iranians must hear there is a unified voice that says that they shall not have a capacity to make a nuclear weapon."
International accords
Iran claims its nuclear programme is peaceful and denies it is seeking nuclear arms.
Bush said Iran "is a country that is walking away from international accords. They're not heading toward the international accords. They're not welcoming the international inspections or safeguard measures that they had agreed to."
With the war in Iraq, now into its fourth year, the main cause of Bush's poor approval rating, the president again pleaded for support for US action in Iraq.
Bush said he was "realistic" about the public reaction. "I fully understand the consequences of this war. I understand people's lives are being lost."
The president predicted more tough fighting in Iraq but insisted there was no civil war.
"We all recognise that there is violence, that there's sectarian violence, but the way I look at the situation is that the Iraqis took a look and decided not to go to civil war," the president said.
"There's going to be more tough fighting ahead. No question that sectarian violence must be confronted by the Iraqi government and our better trained police force, yet we're making progress and that's important for the American people to understand."
The president said Washington was concentrating its efforts on helping Iraqis form a national unity government to avoid a civil war.
He added that Iraq faces "more tough fighting" before it can overcome the insurgency, but that Iraqi and US forces were making progress.
"For every act of violence, there is encouraging progress in Iraq that's hard to capture on the evening news," the US president said.