Iran's president vows a new offer for nuclear talks

UNITED NATIONS - Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said his government was preparing to offer the United States and European nations an updated version of a year-old proposal for talks about its nuclear program.

"We are reconsidering our proposed package," Ahmadinejad said yesterday in an interview on ABC's This Week. He said Iran was "adding new issues" and would make the proposal public "as soon as possible."

The United States and its allies, which did not agree to the earlier proposal, say Iran's uranium-enrichment program is a cover for the development of an atomic weapon. Iran, the second-largest oil producer in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, says its plan is to generate electricity.

Iran, in a May 13 letter to United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon, offered to engage in "just negotiations without preconditions" with the aim of a "comprehensive agreement" on issues including Iran's nuclear program, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and collaboration to combat terrorism, drugs, illegal immigration, and crime.

The United States, Britain, France, and Germany, which have taken the lead in efforts to halt Iran's uranium enrichment, balked at Iran's broad agenda.

They had offered economic benefits, such as wider trade and investment, in exchange for an Iranian enrichment freeze and international nuclear inspections.

The European Union's foreign-policy chief, Javier Solana, is working to set up a new round of talks with Iran. President Obama has said the United States would participate and, according to European diplomats, would not impose additional sanctions on Iran if it froze nuclear-development work.

Any talks should have a "clear-cut framework," Ahmadinejad said on ABC. "The nuclear issue of ours is a special issue.

"We think that the nuclear issue needs to be resolved in the context of the agency and regulations," he said, referring to the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations' watchdog. "We are just utilizing our rights."

The international community has an opportunity to resolve Iran's nuclear issue after the shift in the U.S. stance to dialogue from confrontation, said Mohamed el-Baradei, the agency's director-general.

"What I see is a new environment," Baradei said April 21. "What we hear from Iran is also different."

The U.N. Security Council has passed three sets of sanctions against Iran for its refusal to halt uranium enrichment.

Ahmadinejad, who is up for reelection this year, also said on ABC that he was waiting to see Obama's approach to the Middle East conflict and that Iran would abide by any decision the Palestinian Authority made, including accepting the existence of Israel.

"Whatever decision they take is fine with us," he said. "We think that this is the right of the Palestinian people; however, we fully expect other states to do so as well. The right to determine their fate by the Palestinians should be respected by" the United States and the Europeans.

Israeli forces have detained a Palestinian man suspected of killing an Israeli child and wounding another during a rampage in a West Bank settlement this month, authorities said yesterday.

Officials said the suspect, from a village next to the settlement, had confessed to the killing and handed over a knife used in the attack.

The assailant attacked a group of children in the Bat Ayin settlement with the knife and a pickax April 2. A 13-year-old boy was killed, a 7-year-old was seriously wounded, and a third boy escaped. The attacker left behind the small, red pickax when he fled.

At the time, a murky Palestinian group claimed responsibility. But authorities said yesterday that the suspect, Moussa Tayet, 26, had no links to any militant group.

The Israeli army said Tayet had been caught April 14, but that his arrest was announced only yesterday because he was being interrogated.

- Associated Press

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