USA: President Bush tells the U.N. General Assembly the U.S. wants peace with Iran, is not against Islam, and urges quick action to save Darfur

U.S. President George W. Bush accused Iran's rulers on Tuesday (September 19) of using their people's resources to fund terrorists and pursue nuclear weapons but, facing uncertain international support, vowed to seek a diplomatic solution. In a speech to the United Nations challenging critics of his muscular promotion of democracy in the Middle East, Bush assailed the leaders of Iran and Syria while appealing to their peoples over their heads. "The greatest obstacle to this future is that your rulers have chosen to deny you liberty and to use your nation's resources to fund terrorism and fuel extremism and pursue nuclear weapons," he told Iranians. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has defended his country's right to peaceful nuclear technology, was not in the chamber to hear Bush, but he was expected to respond in his own address to the U.N. General Assembly later in the day. "Iran must abandon its nuclear weapons ambitions," Bush declared after telling reporters he would push for sanctions if Tehran continued to stall on U.N. demands to suspend uranium enrichment, which the West suspects is aimed at making a bomb. But with international backing for punitive measures shaky, he stressed Washington would prefer to resolve the dispute diplomatically, allowing the European Union a little more time to seek a formula for launching negotiations. The U.S. president said he had no objection to Iran's pursuit of peaceful nuclear power and said a diplomatic solution to Iran's nuclear desire was being sought. Bush sounded a note of frustration at the U.N.'s inability to get a peacekeeping force into Sudan's devastated Darfur region. The United Nations passed a resolution last month to send 20,000 peacekeepers to Darfur, where about 7,000 African Union troops have been battling to keep the peace in an area the size of France. Sudan has so far refused to accept a U.N. force. "If the Sudanese government does not approve the peacekeeping force quickly, the U.N. must act," Bush said. He said the lives of the people of Darfur "and the credibility of the United Nations is at stake." Bush also announced he has appointed Andrew Natsios, former head of the U.S. Agency for International Development, as a special U.S. envoy to try to end the violence in Darfur. Years of fighting in Sudan's west have forced more than two million people to flee their homes for overcrowded refugee camps with little prospect of returning to the life they once knew. Non-Arab tribes took up arms against the government in February 2003 to protest alleged neglect and deprivation. Turning to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Bush said he had directed Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to lead a diplomatic effort aimed at getting Israel and the Palestinians to resolve their differences. Bush said that helping the parties reach this goal was "one of the great objectives of my presidency." Amid signs the Bush administration is focusing more attention on the Israeli-Palestinian issue, Rice met both Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly on Monday. Bush is to meet Abbas on Wednesday. The State Department wants to bolster Abbas, whose Fatah party lost in elections last January to the military group Hamas and is encouraging more Israeli contact with him.

ITN Source | September 21, 2006

Tags:. .urges. .conflict. .stressed. .formula. .rice