George Bush urges international action to stop Iran

* Says Syria faces growing isolation over Iraq and Lebanon

WASHINGTON: US President George W Bush on Tuesday appealed for international action to stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons but held back from a call for UN sanctions.

“It is very important for the world to understand that Iran with a nuclear weapon will be incredibly destabilising,” Bush told a White House press conference. “And therefore we must work together to prevent them from having the wherewithal to develop a nuclear weapon.”

Bush said the US would back efforts by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) “to press forward with a full disclosure about Iranian intentions, so that the Security Council can then determine the right policy to go forward.” The US president also said he would raise Iran with other world leaders at the UN summit in New York this week - including President Vladimir Putin of Russia and President Hu Jintao of China.

“I just had a conversation with (British Prime Minister) Tony Blair, and this subject came up,” he added at the press conference following talks with Iraq’s President Jalal Talabani.

Referring to Iran’s insistence that its nuclear programme is peaceful and is meant to increase energy resources, Bush said “Some of us are wondering why they need civilian nuclear power anyway. They are awash with hydrocarbons. Nevertheless, it is the right of a government to want to have a civilian nuclear program, but there ought to be guidelines in which they would be allowed to have that programme,” he said, adding that the main guideline would be to ensure Iran doesn’t acquire the expertise to enrich uranium.

“We’ll see how the Iranians respond here on their visit to the United States,” Bush said. Iran’s newly elected president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, will make his debut on the world stage at the UN summit. Bush also warned Syria that it faced growing isolation because of its failure to stop foreign fighters from entering Iraq and its actions in Lebanon.

“These people are coming from Syria into Iraq and killing a lot of innocent people,” Bush said. “They’re trying to kill our folks as well. And the Syrian leader (President Bashar al-Assad) must understand, we take his lack of action seriously.”

“The (Syrian) government is going to become more and more isolated as a result of two things,” said Bush. “One, not being cooperative with the Iraqi government in terms of securing Iraq. And two, not being fully transparent about what they did in Lebanon.”

Bush did not specify what Syrian actions in Lebanon he was referring to, but Damascus has been widely blamed for the February 14 bomb blast in Beirut that killed former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Hariri.

Bush said he would discuss getting Syria to “change their behavior” with US allies at the UN summit in New York, “particularly as it relates to democracy and trying to prevent democracies from emerging.”

“This is a subject of conversation I’ll have with allies in places like New York, and will communicate with our allies at other times,” he said. afp

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