 Iran on Thursday rejected US President George W Bush's call for freedom directed at the Iranian people as misguided and ignorant of the Islamic republic's history.
| "They don't need no damn' freedom. They got turbans!" |
"Mr Bush has forgotten that the great Iranian people, through the Islamic revolution 26 years ago, put an end to the dominant influence and presence of the United States in Iran," said foreign ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi. The spokesman, quoted by the state news agency IRNA, said the US president was "closing his eyes to the realities of the Islamic republic with its deep-rooted freedom and democracy".
| "We just define 'freedom' and 'democracy' differently. Very differently." |
Bush's comments had "nothing to do with Iran's vibrant society" and only served "to further discredit the American government".
| "Us Medes and Persians, on the other hand, are just as credited as we can be!" |
The president, in his State of the Union address on Wednesday, charged that Iran "remains the world's primary state sponsor of terror — pursuing nuclear weapons while depriving its people of the freedom they seek and deserve". "To the Iranian people, I say tonight: As you stand for your own liberty, America stands with you," he said.
| That's a fairly bald statement, isn't it, Hamid? Think on the implications..." |
Europe failing to deliver: Meanwhile, a senior Iranian official has expressed frustration that European states have not delivered on incentives promised last year in return for Tehran's pledge to suspend nuclear enrichment. "The talks so far do not indicate serious determination of Europeans to achieve any results quickly," Hossein Mousavian, one of Iran's chief nuclear negotiators, told Thursday's Financial Times.
| "It's all their fault, of course..." |
Iran, which denies US accusations that it is seeking nuclear weapons, has agreed to freeze potentially arms-related uranium enrichment activities while the talks continue but has shown impatience with the dialogue launched late last year. In his State of the Union address on Wednesday, US President George W Bush repeated his charge that Iran is developing nuclear weapons and called Iran the "world's primary state sponsor of terror".
| I dunno. It's kind of a tossup between Iran and Soddy Arabia... |
Germany, France and Britain, acting for the Eurpean Union, hope to persuade Tehran to permanently scrap processes such as uranium enrichment - a possible path to the atomic bomb - in return for political and economic incentives. "We have not yet seen considerable progress in our cooperation and no incentives in political, security, technological, economic and nuclear fields," said Mousavian. "Now it is time to deliver something to Iranian public opinion and the nation." |