Iran deadline looms

2009-12-22 21:20

Washington - December is "a very real deadline" for the international community ahead of possible new sanctions on Iran and its nuclear programme, White House spokesperson Robert Gibbs warned on Tuesday.

Earlier on Tuesday Iran's president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad again rejected a year-end deadline set by the US to accept a UN-brokered deal aimed at allaying fears over its nuclear programme.

"They say we have given Iran until the end of the Christian year. Who are they anyway? It is we who have given them an opportunity," Ahmadinejad said in a speech in the city of Shiraz carried live on state television.

Several Iranian officials had already dismissed such a deadline to reach a way out of the nuclear crisis.

With a year-end deadline, President Barack Obama's administration has signalled that time is running out for Iran to seize its offer of diplomatic engagement for resolving nuclear and other issues.

It has raised the spectre of a fourth round of UN sanctions, but will need to persuade Russia and China to drop their traditional reluctance to consider tougher measures.

Iran insists its nuclear programme is solely for civilian purposes and rejects Western suspicions that it is covertly trying to develop a bomb.

Tehran has also rejected a US-backed International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) proposal to ship abroad low-grade nuclear fuel so it can be further enriched and returned to refuel a Tehran medical research reactor.

- SAPA