Opening a farewell tour of Europe, President Bush won European support on Tuesday to consider additional punitive sanctions against Iran, including restrictions on its banks, if Iran rejects a package of incentives to suspend its uranium enrichment program.
But Iran has begun transferring billions of dollars from European banks to Iranian and Asian banks, and buying gold and equities, according to Iranian media reports, apparently to protect its windfall oil revenue from any new sanctions,.
Mr. Bush arrived in Slovenia at the start of a European tour that will take him to Berlin, Rome, Paris, London and Belfast, Northern Ireland. A summit meeting with European Union leaders here was part of an effort to persuade them to adopt a stronger line toward Iran.
Iran’s leaders, Mr. Bush said, “can either face isolation, or they can have better relations with all of us if they verifiably suspend their enrichment program.”
At a news conference after the summit meeting, Mr. Bush warned that if Iran acquired a nuclear weapon, “the free world is going to say, ‘why didn’t we do something about it at the time, before they developed it?’ And so now is the time for there to be strong diplomacy.”
A joint statement issued after the meeting urged Iran to “comply with its international obligations concerning its nuclear activities” and reaffirmed Western commitments to a “dual-track strategy,” employing the threat of punitive sanctions along with incentives to Iran. The European Union’s foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, is to travel to Tehran to present the new package of incentives this weekend.
The communiqué coincided with heightened tensions over Iran’s nuclear program since the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna registered “serious concern” last month about Tehran’s suspected research into the development of nuclear weapons.
The issue became even more pressing after Israel’s transportation minister, Shaul Mofaz, warned last week that an Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear sites would be “unavoidable” if weapons programs proceed.
Some analysts said the language of the joint communiqué on Tuesday appeared to try to ease that sense of threat.
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