Sanctions bid fails, Bush won't exclude Iran nuke strike

UNITED STATES: The United States failed to secure international support for targeted sanctions against Iran and President George W. Bush refused to rule out nuclear strikes if diplomacy failed to curb the Islamic Republic's atomic ambitions.

Bush said he would discuss Iran's nuclear activities with China's President Hu Jintao, who has been cool toward sanctions, during his U.S. visit this week.

Asked if his options included planning for a nuclear strike, Bush said: "All options are on the table. We want to solve this issue diplomatically and we're working hard to do so."

But a meeting of major powers in Moscow ended without consensus despite strong U.S. pressure for international sanctions. Washington believes Iran is trying to build bombs but Tehran says it is only developing nuclear energy.

The meeting of deputy foreign ministers of the U.N. Security Council's permanent members - The United States, Britain, France, China and Russia - plus Germany, was called after Tehran declared last week that it had enriched uranium and was aiming for industrial-scale production.

The No. 3 U.S. State Department official, Nicholas Burns, argued that sanctions should be imposed on Iran, but Russia and China are resisting and the parties came to no agreement, said State Department spokesman Tom Casey in Washington.

"Burns raised the issue of some form of sanctions and there will need to be further discussions on this," he said after being briefed by U.S. officials about the meeting.

The United States, which already enforces its own sweeping sanctions on Iran, wants the Security Council to be ready for strong diplomatic action, including measures such as a freeze on assets and visa curbs on Iranian officials.

Tehran had vowed to continue its pursuit of nuclear technology, whatever the meeting's outcome.

"Whatever the result of this meeting might be, Iran will not abandon its rights," Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi said before the meeting ended.

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack stressed that the goal of the Moscow meeting was to make preparations for decisions to be taken in various capitals.

Meanwhile French President Jacques Chirac, due in Cairo on a two-day visit, told Egyptian daily Al-Ahram that it was "unacceptable" for Iran to have nuclear weapons, and called for "necessary gestures" from Israel and the Palestinians for "real negotiations" to resume.

The Iranian nuclear problem and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will be high on the agenda when Chirac meets Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak on Wednesday.

The Iranian leaders "must understand that, for the international community, the prospect of a militarily nuclearized Iran is unacceptable," Chirac said in an interview.

The French president insisted that the door remained open for a resumption of talks as soon as Iran went along with the requests of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the UN Security Council, stressing that "more than ever the choice is in the hands of the Iranian leaders." Washington, Cairo,Wednesday, Reuters, AFP