Iran Sends Mixed Signals

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called on Western nations Tuesday to stop their own enrichment programs if they wanted his country to stop its own and return to negotiations.

Ahmadinejad told a crowd of thousands in northern Iran one day ahead of a U.N. Security Council deadline that it was no problem for his country to stop, as long as western nations did the same.

"Justice demands that those who want to hold talks with us shut down their nuclear fuel cycle program too," he said. "Then, we can hold dialogue under a fair atmosphere."

Ahmadinejad spoke in a far more conciliatory tone than the one he usually adopts, avoiding fiery denunciations of the West with a call for talks.

"We are for talks but they have to be fair negotiations. That means, both sides hold talks under equal conditions," he said.

He added, however, that it was unacceptable for countries to demand that Iran stop its nuclear activities without reciprocity.

His demand that the U.S., or any other Western nation halt uranium enrichment was highly unlikely to be met.

Ahmadinejad's comments come amid steadily increasing political tension between Washington and Tehran, with President Bush pushing the United Nations to enact tougher sanctions against Iran over the Islamic state's secretive nuclear program.

Later Tuesday, Iran's senior nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani said as he walked into a meeting with the head of the U.N. nuclear agency that his government wanted to start new talks about its enrichment program.

"We are looking for ways and means to start negotiations," said Larijani, before closed-door talks with Mohamed ElBaradei, the chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Larijani's brief statement made no reference to President Ahmadinejad's demand that any country joining Iran at the negotiating table must also halt enrichment on its own soil, and it wasn't clear if his comments indicated some flexibility on that prerequisite.

The U.N. Security Council has set Wednesday as a deadline for Iran to stop uranium enrichment or face further economic sanctions.

ElBaradei said Monday there was still time to negotiate with Iran about its nuclear program, noting that it would take years for Tehran to produce weapons.

Mr. Bush has repeatedly accused Iran of trying to develop a nuclear weapon, but Ahmadinejad insists his country's enrichment program is only for energy production.

As the rhetoric between the two capitals has intensified in recent weeks, the U.S. military has increased its presence in the Persian Gulf, a move touted as a visible deterrent by American officials, but criticized as war posturing by Iran.

The White House has repeatedly denied any intention of attacking Iran.

But, according to a Monday night report by the British Broadcasting Corporation, the plans are drawn up, and the U.S. government has already determined the two circumstances which would trigger just such an attack.

The BBC, citing diplomatic sources, says the Pentagon has plans ready for airstrikes targeting Iran's known nuclear sites and most of its military installations.

It is not unusual or unexpected for the Pentagon to have contingency plans for an attack against a country deemed as a security threat, but the BBC report provided more details surrounding a potential U.S. strike against Iran.

Two things could trigger the attack, according to the report; evidence that Iran was developing a nuclear weapon, or a "high-casualty" attack against American forces in Iraq that could be traced directly to the leadership in Tehran.

As a backdrop to these criteria, U.S. officials recently said that a particularly powerful form of improvised explosive device (IED) used against American soldiers in Iraq was coming from Iran.

Military officials in Baghdad first made the accusation, and suggested that top levels of the Iranian government were involved in supplying the weapons.

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Peter Pace, and then Mr. Bush himself, softened that claim, saying there was no doubt the weapons came from Iran, but that it was not possible to say exactly who in Tehran was aware of their delivery to Iraq's militias.