Hillary slams Bush administration for its Iran policy

WASHINGTON: Continuing to talk tough on Iran especially on its nuclear programme, leading Democratic Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has slammed the Bush Administration for not using diplomacy with Tehran to resolve the controversial issue.

"I am very concerned about Iran. And I believe that we should have been using diplomacy for a number of years now. I am... pleased that the administration is starting to talk to the Iranians, but it is way overdue," Senator Hillary Clinton, the front runner in the party for the nomination, said at a debate in New Hampshire.

"We have allowed the Iranians to begin their nuclear programme, to imprison Iranian Americans as they are now, to send weapons across their borders to be used against our young men and women," she said in response to a query.

"And we need a process of engagement. You know, the President's policy has been, we don't talk in this administration to people we don't agree with or that we think are bad," the New York Democrat maintained.

During the Cold War, she said "we always talked to the Soviet Union. They had missiles pointed at us. They had leaders who said they would bury us. They waged wars around the world. We never stopped talking."

"Are you always going to get good results? No. But you've got to start the process. However, we still have to make it clear that Iran having a nuclear weapon is absolutely unacceptable. We have to try to prevent that at all costs," Senator Clinton said.

"But we need to start with diplomacy in order to see what we can accomplish," she said, refusing to get into a hypothetical question of what she will do if diplomacy fails.

"I'm not going to get into hypotheticals, because we've had an administration that doesn't believe in diplomacy. You know, they have every so often Secretary of State Condi (Condoleezza) Rice go around the world and show up some where and make a speech, and occasionally they even send (Vice President) Dick Cheney -- and that's hardly diplomatic in my view," Senator Clinton said.

John Edwards, former Senator and Vice Presidential candidate, said: "...there's a long history of pro-American sentiment in Iran. There is an extraordinary opportunity available to us on Iran. And there's a very clear path, from my perspective."

"They have a President who's politically unpopular. The people are in a different place. He hasn't done what he promised to do...We don't have economic leverage over the Iranians. But the Europeans do. The European banking system does.

"We should put two options on the table. One, carrots: we'll make the nuclear fuel available to you, the international community, but we'll control it; you can't nuclearise -- you can't weaponise it. Second, we're going to put a clear set of economic incentives on the table," Edwards said.

"... I think no President -- no responsible President -- would ever take any option off the table" he added.

The Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Joseph Biden, seen by some analysts as having come away from the debate strong with clear views, argued that regime change is not the way to go about.

"I would do away with the policy of regime change. What we're saying to everybody in Iran is: Look, by the way, give up the one thing that keeps us from attacking you and after that we're going to attack you, we're going to take you down. It's a bizarre notion..." Biden said.

"... understand how weak Iran is. They are not a year away or two years away. They are a decade away from being able to weaponise with exactly what the question was, if they put a nuclear weapon on top of a missile that can strike. They are far away from that," the Delaware Democrat stressed.

"... we have to understand how weak that government is. They import almost all of their refined oil. By 2014, they are going to be importing their crude oil. There are much better ways if we had to get to the point of real sanctions of doing economic sanctions on them forcefully that way. But at the end of the day, if they posed a missile, stuck it on a pad, I'd take it out," Biden said.