Bush: Iran top terrorist sponsor

ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates - President Bush yesterday called Iran "the world's leading state sponsor of terror" and sought to shore up opposition to the government in Tehran throughout the Middle East.

But even as he criticized Iranian leaders, saying they were seeking to repress their own citizens and cow neighboring countries, Bush appealed to U.S. allies in the region to open up their own political and economic systems to greater democracy.

Spotlighting a swath of the globe where U.S. diplomacy is built around seeking help for the administration's antiterrorism effort, Bush criticized only Iran by name. He avoided mentioning Egypt, his final stop on a six-nation Middle East trip, despite its long record of human-rights abuses, limited political rights, and economic disparity. Nor did he cite other nations across the region with similarly troubled histories.

Speaking just 150 miles across the Persian Gulf from Iran, Bush said the Islamic Republic "sends hundreds of millions of dollars to extremists around the world, while its own people face repression and economic hardship at home." He said Iran was seeking "to intimidate its neighbors with ballistic missiles and bellicose rhetoric."

In Tehran, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammed Ali Hosseini dismissed the Bush's approach to Iran as ineffective.

"During the past seven years, the Bush administration has followed a policy to isolate Iran and promote Iranophobia in the region," Hosseini said, according the official Islamic Republic News Agency. "All regional states adopted a vigilant approach regarding that policy and opposed it."

Bush's criticism of Tehran occurred as the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, Austria, reported that Iranian representatives had promised to answer key questions within a month about their nation's past covert nuclear activities.

Tehran also provided information about its effort to develop an advanced centrifuge that would enrich uranium much more quickly and efficiently than a model it now uses, the U.N. agency said.

Bush made only brief reference to alleged Iranian efforts to develop a nuclear weapon, which an administration intelligence report recently said had been halted in 2003, and did not speak of the announcement in Vienna.

National Security Council spokesman Gordon D. Johndroe said in Abu Dhabi of Iranian officials: "Answering questions about their past nuclear activities is a step, but they still need to suspend their enrichment and reprocessing activity. Another declaration is no substitute for complying with the U.N. sanctions."

Bush spoke here to an audience of government officials, business executives, academics and students assembled by the Emirates Center for Strategic Studies and Research, a think tank.

Delivering an otherwise gingerly worded address intended to revive a quiescent campaign for broader democracy across the Middle East, he called for reforms that would transform life from Morocco to Pakistan.

Using the language of a middle-school civics lesson, Bush proclaimed a "new era," which he said was "founded on the equality of all people before God."

It is built, he said, "with the understanding that power is a trust that must be exercised with the consent of the governed - and deliver equal justice under the law."

"For decades, the people of this region saw their desire for liberty and justice denied at home and dismissed abroad in the name of stability," the president said. "Today your aspirations are threatened by violent extremists who murder the innocent in pursuit of power."

The president spoke in an opulent auditorium of the $3 billion Emirates Palace Hotel in Abu Dhabi, one of the two major metropolitan areas in the United Arab Emirates. He planned to visit the other, Dubai, today on his way to Saudi Arabia.

There was no applause during the speech; at the end, the audience applauded with restraint, and stood as he left the stage.

Bush has had two principal themes on the eight-day trip: encouraging support around the region for fledgling Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, and pressing leaders at each stop to stand with the United States in its efforts to change Iranian behavior.

Senior administration officials had promoted the speech as a return to what Bush calls his "freedom agenda." His plea for Middle Eastern democracy was given voice in his second inaugural address but has drawn little public presidential focus in the intervening years as Bush sought to right foundering efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Bush called Abu Dhabi an example of the future he sees for the region, citing its openness to international trade and appointment of women to ministerial posts.

But the State Department's most recent human-rights report, issued last March, called respect for human rights here problematic, noting that citizens had no right to change the government, that freedom of speech was restricted, and that flogging was a judicially approved punishment.

A threatening radio message to three U.S. warships may have been a coincidence but was taken seriously because it came at the same time Iranian vessels swarmed the American fleet, the commander of one of the American ships said yesterday.

Cmdr. Jeffrey James of the destroyer USS Hopper and Capt. David Adler of the cruiser USS Port Royal would not say how close the Navy was to firing at the Iranians Jan. 6 in the Strait of Hormuz. But the Iranians knew what they were doing when they charged the U.S. vessels, they said.

James said: "This was not a loose bunch of guys."

The officers gave a news conference at the Bahrain headquarters of the Navy's

Fifth Fleet, which patrols the gulf.

The United States released a video recording showing small Iranian boats swarming around U.S. warships, and an audio recording, in which a man says in accented English: "You will explode after . . . minutes."

Navy officials have not determined the source of the threatening call but believe it was related to the actions of the Iranian boats. Iran has denied that its boats threatened the U.S. vessels, and has accused Washington of fabricating the video and audio.

Adler said he hoped other ships passing through the gulf would avoid provocations.

- Associated Press

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