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OT BUSH WANTS ANSWERS on Iran's New President
[NYTr] Bush "Wants Answers" on Iran's New President
[url]http://olm.blythe-systems.com/pipermail/nytr/Week-of-Mon-20050627/019235.html[/url]
[Expect to see this non-story pumped up in the mainstream media for
days and perhaps weeks to come. It's a great diversion from Bush's
current troubles, and of course it fuels the "Bomb-Bomb-Iran" drumbeat
for the drooling neo-cons.-NY Transfer]
Reuters via The New York Times - June 30, 2005
[url]http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=578&e=3&u=/nm/20050630/ts_nm/iran_usa_ahmadinejad_dc[/url]
Bush says wants answers on Iran leader's past
By Caren Bohan
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Bush said on Thursday he wanted
answers on
whether Iranian President-elect Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was a leader in the
1979
U.S. Embassy siege as some former hostages have said.
Several of the Americans who were held said they recognized the
ultraconservative Tehran mayor -- who was elected president in a
landslide
on Friday -- as a ringleader in the hostage-taking.
However, two leading figures in the embassy seizure said he did not
take
part.
"I have no information," Bush told reporters during a briefing on the
upcoming G8 summit in Scotland. "But obviously his involvement raises
many
questions, and knowing how active people are at finding answers to
questions, I'm confident they will be found."
Bush also issued a warning to Ahmadinejad, 48, that he and European
leaders
would send a "strong message" to him about their concerns over Iran's
nuclear ambitions.
In the 1979-1981 hostage crisis that led Washington to break ties with
Tehran, 52 Americans were held for 444 days.
Bush has branded Iran as part of an "axis of evil" for allegedly
pursuing
nuclear arms and sponsoring terrorism. Iran denies the charges.
In interviews with U.S. television networks, retired Navy Capt. Donald
Sharer and Bill Daugherty said they were convinced Ahmadinejad was one
of
their Iranian captors.
"He wasn't a very nice fellow at the time. He called us pigs and dogs.
He's
very hard-line, he's a guy we are not going to get along with," said
Sharer
in an interview with ABC's "Good Morning America" show.
Daugherty said he had "no doubts at all" that Ahmadinejad was one of
his
hostage-takers.
"When your country is being humiliated and being embarrassed, the
individuals that do that really stick in your mind. You don't forget
people
who do things like that to you and your family and your country,"
Daugherty
said.
In Iran, Abbas Abdi, who helped to orchestrate the raid, said
Ahmadinejad
"was not among those who occupied the American Embassy after the
revolution."
Mohsen Mirdamadi, another ringleader, said: "I deny such reports.
Ahmadinejad was not a member of the radical students' group who seized
the
embassy."
Since his victory, U.S. officials have said little publicly about
Ahmadinejad, though they have criticized the election itself as flawed
and
unfair.
Bush said he had spoken to British Prime Minister Tony Blair and German
Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder about efforts to prevent Iran from
pursuing
nuclear arms, and he said he would also be speaking to French President
Jacques Chirac.
"My message is that it's very important at this moment for the EU-3 to
send
a strong message to the new person (in Iran), that the world is united
in
saying that you should not be given the capabilities of enriching
uranium
which could then be converted into a nuclear weapon," Bush said.
"In other words, we've got a new man who's assumed power, and he must
hear a
focused message," he added.
The United States accuses Iran of seeking to develop nuclear weapons
but the
country's leaders insist they want to produce nuclear energy for purely
peaceful purposes.
(Additional reporting by Sue Pleming and Joanne Allen in Washington and
Parisa Hafezi in Tehran)
Copyright © 2005 Reuters Limited.
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