The U.S. would like to see a different kind of regime in Iran, Rice

BERLIN, May 31 (Islamonline.net & News Agencies) - The United States would like to see a different kind of regime in Iran, Condoleezza Rice, U.S. national security adviser said Saturday, May 31, as Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharazi said that Iran will resist U.S. pressure, in particular over its nuclear research program.

"The U.S. do not want us to have access to civilian nuclear technology, but we have the right to take part in this progress," he said in an interview with the German news magazine Der Spiegel due to appear Monday, June 2.

He denied claims that Iran was seeking to acquire nuclear weapons, saying his country was cooperating with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and was respecting the agreements it had signed.

Tehran was not afraid that Washington could be hoping for a change of regime in the country. "We shall resist that pressure as well," he said.

Kharazi rejected U.S. claims that Iran was sheltering senior figures from the al-Qaeda terror network.

"We have fought this organization, we have arrested some of its members and we have sent them to their countries of origin," he said.

The U.S. has accused Iraq of developing banned weapons and harboring terrorism as pretexts to invade and occupy the country, a scenario that could be repeated with Iran.

"The U.S. do not want us to have access to civilian nuclear technology, but we have the right to take part in this progress," Kharazi

Meanwhile, national security adviser to U.S. President George W. Bush, told Saturday's Financial Times that United States would like to see a different kind of regime in Iran.

The United States would like to see a different kind of regime in Iran, which will move away from "pursuing an aggressive agenda based on terrorism and weapons of mass destruction", Rice told the paper.

But Rice's statement of U.S. ambitions in an interview with the paper fell short of the desire for regime change in Tehran, the London-based business daily said.

The FT said, however, that Rice had signaled that Washington was determined to address an "Iranian threat", describing it in similar terms to that formerly posed by Saddam Hussein's toppled regime in Iraq.

Rice told the paper that the White House wanted to see an elected government in Tehran which meets the demands of the Iranian people for "a regime which protects the rights of women, which is forward looking and modern."

However, Bush dismissed reports of a planned attack on Iran as "idle speculation" in a Russian television interview broadcast late Friday, May 30.

"We've had all kinds of reports that we're going to use force in Syria and now some in the left I guess are saying force in Iran, force here and force there," he told Russia's state-run Rossiya channel.

"You know, this is pure speculation and we used force in Iraq after a long, long period of diplomacy. People love to speculate about U.S. intentions and our military and I'm just telling you it's idle speculation," Bush added.

The U.S.-led coalition in Iraq turned up the pressure on neighboring Iran on Friday with a warning against whom it called "Islamist hardliners" it said were pouring into destabilize the country.

The announcement on coalition radio in Baghdad came on the heels of charges by U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on Thursday that Tehran was shipping elite troops across the border into Iraq.

In another development, The United States on Friday May 30 flatly rejected a reported Russian offer for it to join in the construction of a nuclear power station in Iran.

The State Department said "no country" should be assisting Iran with any part of its nuclear program until the Islamic Republic deals with the U.S. allegations and allows more intense international inspections of its facilities.

"Iran uses its civil nuclear program, including the light-water nuclear reactor at Bushehr, as a pretext that allows it to pursue sensitive nuclear technology," said Lynn Cassel, a department spokeswoman.

She referred specifically to the project Russia is helping Iran to build that has been the crux of Washington's complaints to Moscow and one of the main foci of International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors who are to report on Tehran's program in June.

"Until Iran has fully satisfied the IAEA examination and fully addressed the international community's concerns and questions, including full implementation of the IAEA additional protocol for strengthened safeguards, no country should be engaging in nuclear cooperation with Iran," Cassel said.

Earlier Friday, Russia's Atomic Energy Minister Alexander Rumantsyev said Moscow had invited Washington on several occasions to help it in building the Bushehr reactor to ensure it is for peaceful energy-related purposes only.

"We have made this proposal several times to our American colleagues in talks at expert level," Russia's ITAR-TASS news agency quoted Rumantsyev as saying. "For the moment, they are saying they have to consider."

Iran has vehemently denied the U.S. accusations and, to date, Moscow has rejected Washington's appeals to halt its nuclear cooperation with Tehran.

On Thursday, Russia stressed that only the IAEA is qualified to determine whether Iran's nuclear program has a military component or not and said its work at Bushehr is based on "strict observation of its obligations with regard to non-proliferation."

The Iran issue is expected to feature prominently on the agenda of an informal summit between Putin and Bush in Saint Petersburg on Sunday where the Russian and U.S. presidents will be among more than 40 world leaders attending celebrations of the 300th anniversary of the city's founding.