Dr. Rice: Iran Human Rights Record "Something to be Loathed"

[onedomino]

Dr. Rice described Iran exactly as she should. It stands in sharp contrast to the Euro appeasement specialists. She was correct to say that the US will not support the EU efforts to appease evil.

Rice Says U.S. Won't Aid Europe on Plans for Incentives to Iran
By STEVEN R. WEISMAN, ELAINE SCIOLINO and DAVID E. SANGER
Published: February 4, 2005

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/04/international/middleeast/04diplo.html (full text; probably requires registration)

ONDON, Feb. 3 - Less than a day after President Bush declared he was "working with European allies" to persuade Iran to give up its nuclear program, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the United States would continue to rebuff European requests to participate directly in offering incentives for Iran to drop what is suspected of being a nuclear arms program.

Opening her first overseas trip as secretary, Ms. Rice also declared that the Tehran government's record on human rights was "something to be loathed" -a harsh comment that comes at a time when many European leaders have asked the United States to help lower tensions with Iran.

"I don't think anybody thinks that the unelected mullahs who run that regime are a good thing for the Iranian people or for the region," Ms. Rice said to reporters on her plane to London. "I think our European allies agree that the Iranian regime's human rights behavior and its behavior toward its own population is something to be loathed."

Ms. Rice made her remarks as the Iranians, the Europeans and many in Washington were dissecting Mr. Bush's comments about Iran - and far gentler words about Saudi Arabia and Egypt - in his State of the Union address on Wednesday night. In the address, Mr. Bush seemed to invite the people of Iran to liberate themselves from their clerical rulers, for the first time matching a specific nation to his Inauguration Day call for an end to tyranny around the world.

But he also sounded willing to support the Europeans in their initiative to negotiate an end to a key part of Iran's nuclear program.

"Today, Iran remains the world's primary state sponsor of terror, pursuing nuclear weapons while depriving its people of the freedom they seek and deserve," Mr. Bush said. "We are working with European allies to make clear to the Iranian regime that it must give up its uranium enrichment program and any plutonium reprocessing, and end its support for terror. And to the Iranian people, I say tonight: As you stand for your own liberty, America stands with you."

But he made no effort to urge the people of Egypt or Saudi Arabia to challenge their governments, even though both countries have turned aside Mr. Bush's past calls that they allow democratic forces to determine who will rule their governments. "The government of Saudi Arabia can demonstrate its leadership in the region by expanding the role of its people in determining their future," he said in the speech, and Egypt "can now show the way toward democracy in the Middle East."

In Washington on Thursday night, a senior administration official said the reason for the difference was simple. "We do not have relations with the government of Iran, and it is not a government moving in the direction of giving its people greater participation in their affairs," the official said. "If anything, they have cracked down on the opposition."

But the official argued that "Egypt and Saudi Arabia are a contrast with Iran, because we do have good relations with those governments, and while they are not perfect they are nonetheless making steps toward greater participation."

The official, who was involved in the decisions leading up to the address, said Mr. Bush "wanted to answer the question asked after his inaugural: What do you do with countries that are allies in the war on terror but need to do more?"

In Iran on Thursday, the country's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, predicted that Mr. Bush, like every other American president since Iran's 1979 revolution, would fail to overthrow the Islamic republic.

"Bush is the fifth U.S. president who wants to destroy the Islamic republic," the ayatollah told university students. "But he will fail as did Jimmy Carter, Reagan, Bush senior and Clinton." Branding the United States "one of the heads of the dragon of world oppression," he charged that Mr. Bush had been installed in the White House by "Zionist and non-Zionist companies and capitalists to serve their interests."

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[NATO AIR]

its good we're not going to help the EU kowtow to the Iranian mullahs, in the same way they bow to Castro and the Chinese overlords...-