Rice says US could pressure Iran outside UN

WASHINGTON - US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has warned the United States might take steps outside the UN Security Council to pressure Iran to stop its nuclear program.

Rice, who appeared on several Sunday television talk shows, said Washington still had a number of diplomatic steps it could take through the UN Security Council against Iran. However, if the Council did not act quickly enough, Washington and its allies would not wait.

"I absolutely believe that we have a lot of diplomatic arrows in our quiver at the Security Council and also like-minded states that would be able and willing to look at additional measures if the Security Council does not move quickly enough," Rice said on the CBS show Face the Nation.

Rice accused Iran of "playing games" with the international community, saying Tehran had had plenty of time to comply with earlier demands to halt its program.

The United States contends that Iran is working to develop nuclear weapons, but Tehran says its program is purely to meet civil energy needs.

The United States, Britain and France want to introduce a new Security Council resolution which would require Tehran to abandon uranium enrichment. The International Atomic Energy Agency reported last week that Tehran had defied an earlier Security Council deadline to halt its enrichment program.

The new resolution would invoke Chapter VII of the UN Charter, making compliance mandatory and punishable by sanctions if violated. However, the United States still has to overcome veto threats by Russia and China to get such a resolution through the Council.

Iran renewed its defiant stance on Sunday, vowing to ignore any such resolution and to strike back if attacked.

Earlier, Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesman, Hamid Reza Asefi, had suggested there could be still be room to consider a proposal to move Iran's enrichment work to Russia.

Despite its defiance, Rice said Iran was trying to avoid international isolation. She disputed an assessment by her predecessor as secretary of state, Colin Powell, who said in an interview in London that Iran appeared willing to accept sanctions to continue its atomic program.

"When the Iranians say things like, 'We don't care if there are sanctions,' then I ask myself, then why are they working so hard to stay out of the Security Council?" Rice said on CBS.

Deputy Oil Minister Mohammad Hadi Nejad-Hosseinian on Sunday said there was little risk of sanctions on Iran's energy sector while oil prices flirt with record highs.

But Rice said no one was considering oil or gas sanctions, adding that there were a other options.

She sidestepped a question on whether she agreed with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was a psychopath. But she said the Iranian president's behaviour reinforced the world's concerns about his country acquiring nuclear weapons.

"I have no idea. I have never seen the man or talked to him," Rice said on CNN's Late Edition. "I just know that nobody speaks in polite company in that way and that he represents the Iranian regime very badly."

- REUTERS