U.S. President George W. Bush today emphasized that any U.S. contacts with Iran will deal only with Iranian activities in Iraq and that Tehran's nuclear ambitions will be dealt with multilaterally. Speaking at a rare, hour-long press conference in Washington, Bush described instructing U.S. Ambassador to Iraq to contact the Iranians to "explain to [them] … what we didn't like about their involvement in Iraq." "You make it clear to them that attempts to spread sectarian violence or to maybe move parts that could be used for IEDs (improvised explosive devices) is unacceptable to the United States," Bush said. But the president emphasized that U.S. contacts with Iran would not address fears that the country is trying to produce nuclear weapons. "Our negotiations with Iran on the nuclear weapons will be led by the EU-3 (Britain, Germany and France), and that's important because the Iranians must hear there's a unified voice … that says that they shall not have a capacity to make a nuclear weapon … for the sake of security of the world," Bush said. Despite the U.S.-Iranian contacts over Iraq - which are taking place despite continued lack of U.S. diplomatic representation in Iran - Bush stressed that Iran and Iraq would have to formulate their own bilateral relations. "Iraq is a sovereign government. They have a foreign policy, and when they get their unity government stepped up, they will be in charge of negotiating with the Iranians their foreign policy arrangement," he said.
