Iranian Letter Lambastes Bush

U.N. Delays Resolution On Curbing Iran's Nuclear Program

(CBS/AP)  Iran's president declared in a letter to President Bush that democracy had failed worldwide and lamented "an ever-increasing global hatred" of the U.S. government. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice swiftly rejected the letter, saying it didn't resolve questions about Tehran's suspect nuclear program.

"This letter is not the place that one would find an opening to engage on the nuclear issue or anything of the sort," Rice said in an interview with The Associated Press. "It isn't addressing the issues that we're dealing with in a concrete way."

Rice's comments were the most detailed response from the United States to the letter, the first from an Iranian head of state to an American president since the 1979 hostage crisis at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran.

On Tuesday, key Security Council nations agreed to present Iran with a choice of benefits or sanctions to consider in deciding whether to suspend uranium enrichment, a move that will delay a U.N. resolution to curb Iran's nuclear program, a European official said.

Political directors of the United States, Russia, China, Britain and France as well as Germany made the decision to present Tehran with the options at a meeting following more than three hours of talks by their foreign ministers Monday night that failed to reach agreement on the resolution.

The letter from President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad made only an oblique reference to Iran's nuclear intentions, asking why "any technological and scientific achievement reached in the Middle East region is translated into and portrayed as a threat to the Zionist regime."

Otherwise, it lambasted Mr. Bush for his handling of the Sept. 11 terror attacks, accused the media of spreading lies about the Iraq war and railed against the United States for its support of Israel. It questioned whether the world would be a different place if the money spent on Iraq had been spent to fight poverty.

"Would not your administration's political and economic standing have been stronger?" the letter said. "And I am most sorry to say, would there have been an ever-increasing global hatred of the American government?"

Ahmadinejad on Tuesday called his letter "words and opinions of the Iranian nation" aimed at finding a "way out of problems" facing humanity, according to the official Iranian news agency. He spoke briefly before boarding a plane for Indonesia, where he was to attend a summit of developing nations.

Iran's top nuclear negotiator called the surprise letter a new "diplomatic opening" between the two countries, but Rice said it failed to resolve the dispute over the Iranian nuclear program, the focus of intense U.N. Security Council debate this week.

“Moving the ball forward, however, Secretary of State Rice expressed the interest of the U.S. in continuing negotiations with the other political directors of the world powers who will negotiate an options package to present to Iran next week from a European Union meeting in Brussels,” reports CBS News foreign affairs analyst Pamela Falk.

The Iranian negotiator, Ali Larijani, also said Tuesday that Tehran had no intention of withdrawing from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and promised to cooperate if the U.N. atomic watchdog agency dealt with the issue of its nuclear program, rather than the Security Council.

On Sunday, Iran's parliament threatened to ask the government to withdraw its signature from a protocol in the treaty that allows intrusive surprise inspections of nuclear facilities.

"We have no reason to leave the NPT. Our case is completely different from that of North Korea," Larijani said during a visit to Athens, Greece. "The additional protocol is one thing, and the NPT is another," he said.

White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan said Mr. Bush had been briefed on the letter, which the White House received Monday through the Swiss Embassy in Tehran.

"There's nothing in here that would suggest that we're on any different course than we were before we got the letter," Rice said.

Even though the letter hardly touched on nuclear issues, officials said it appeared timed with a push by the United States and its European allies for a Security Council resolution to restrain Tehran's nuclear ambitions. Both China and Russia are opposed to leveling sanctions against Iran, and the letter could provide them support.