Iran balks at incentive package

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) -- Iran's president mocked a package of incentives to suspend uranium enrichment, saying Wednesday they were like giving up gold for chocolate -- defiance that appeared certain to complicate U.S. efforts to curb Tehran's nuclear ambitions.

"Do you think you are dealing with a 4-year-old child to whom you can give some walnuts and chocolates and get gold from him?" President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad asked derisively.

He spoke before a huge crowd in the city of Arak, the site of a heavy-water reactor that is scheduled for completion by early 2009. Such facilities produce plutonium as a byproduct usable in building nuclear weapons.

Signaling the difficulties ahead, a high-level, six-nation meeting on Iran was postponed Wednesday, reflecting differences between the United States and its allies on one side, and the Chinese and Russians on the other.

The London meeting of senior officials from the five permanent Security Council members and Germany was to have been held Friday, but was postponed to Tuesday at the earliest, diplomats told The Associated Press.

The British Foreign Office said the move was "to allow a further detailed preparation of the ... offer to Iran."

China and Russia have opposed bringing Iran's case to a vote in the U.N. Security Council, where the United States, Britain and France have pressed for sanctions.

Only a day earlier, European nations said they might add a light-water reactor to a package of incentives meant to persuade Tehran to permanently give up enrichment.

But Ahmadinejad heaped scorn on the offer in the nationally televised speech Wednesday.

"They say they want to offer us incentives," he said. "We tell them: keep the incentives as a gift for yourself. We have no hope of anything good from you."

His defiance was met with shouts of, "We love you Ahmadinejad!" from the crowd.

A light-water reactor is considered less likely to be misused for nuclear proliferation than a heavy-water facility, which produces plutonium waste.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi joined the president in the counterattack, mockingly offering the Europeans trade concessions if the EU dropped its opposition to the nuclear program.

"We are prepared to offer economic incentives to Europe in return for recognizing our right (to enrich uranium)," state radio quoted him as saying.

The fiery Ahmadinejad said Tehran had put its trust in the European Union in 2003 and suspended its nuclear activities as a confidence-building measure as negotiations continued. The EU then demanded that Iran permanently stop uranium enrichment.

"We won't be bitten twice," Ahmadinejad said.

The 2003 deal called for guarantees that Iran's nuclear program was only intended for building reactors for electricity generation and was not being used as a cover to develop weapons. Iran agreed to the request, but negotiations collapsed in August 2005 when the Europeans said the best guarantee was for Iran to permanently give up its uranium enrichment program.

Iran responded by resuming reprocessing activities at its uranium conversion facility in Isfahan.

On Wednesday, Ahmadinejad underlined Iran's determination to continue enrichment and scolded the Europeans for what he viewed as doing the dirty work of the Americans.

"We recommend that you not sacrifice your interests for the sake of others," he said.

Ahmadinejad also reissued his threat to pull out of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.

"Don't force governments and nations to renounce their membership in the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty," he said asserting that Iran had the right to a civilian nuclear power program.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, meanwhile, said Tuesday that Beijing and Moscow would not vote for using force to resolve the nuclear dispute.

In a gesture to Tehran, Lavrov also said Ahmadinejad was attending a summit next month in Shanghai, China, of leaders from Russia, China and four Central Asian nations.

"We cannot isolate Iran or exert pressure on it," Lavrov said. "Far from resolving this issue of proliferation, it will make it more urgent."

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Associated Press Writer George Jahn in Vienna, Austria, contributed to this report.