Edwards Says Kerry Plans to Confront Iran on Weapons

Edwards: if Iran failed to take the "great bargain" (be allowed to keep its nuclear power plants in exchange for giving up the right to retain the nuclear fuel that could be used for bomb-making), it would essentially confirm that it is building nuclear weapons under the cover of a supposedly peaceful nuclear power initiative.

Edwards Says Kerry Plans to Confront Iran on Weapons

By Glenn Kessler and Robin Wright
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, August 30, 2004; Page A01


A John F. Kerry administration would propose to Iran that the Islamic state be allowed to keep its nuclear power plants in exchange for giving up the right to retain the nuclear fuel that could be used for bomb-making, Democratic vice presidential nominee John Edwards said in an interview yesterday.

Edwards said that if Iran failed to take what he called a "great bargain," it would essentially confirm that it is building nuclear weapons under the cover of a supposedly peaceful nuclear power initiative. He said that, if elected, Kerry would ensure that European allies were prepared to join the United States in levying heavy sanctions if Iran rejected the proposal. "If we are engaging with Iranians in an effort to reach this great bargain and if in fact this is a bluff that they are trying to develop nuclear weapons capability, then we know that our European friends will stand with us," Edwards said.

Edwards's notion of proposing such a bargain with Iran, combined with Kerry's statement in December that he was prepared to explore "areas of mutual interest" with Iran, suggests that Kerry would take a sharply different approach with Iran than has President Bush. The United States has not had diplomatic relations with Iran since its 1979 revolution, and Iran was part of Bush's "axis of evil" that included North Korea and the former government of Iraq. Earlier this month, Bush declared that Iran "must abandon her nuclear ambitions."<snip>

Edwards, interviewed yesterday in the living room of his Georgetown townhouse as he sipped a Diet Coke, said that in Afghanistan, Kerry would push to expand NATO forces beyond Kabul to enhance security and would double the $123 million in funds to counter the drug trade that the administration spent in 2004 in Afghanistan. He said that despite the problems NATO has had in meeting its commitment in Afghanistan, Kerry would push NATO to add troops there and perhaps military equipment, but that the U.S. force of 20,000 would not be expanded.<snip>

"At the end of the day can argue all they want about their policies," Edwards said. "But the test is: Have they worked? And Iran is further along in developing a nuclear weapon than they were when George Bush came into office."


http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/30/politics/campaign/30edwards.html

Edwards Takes Aim at Bush 'Miscalculations'
By DAVID E. SANGER

ASHINGTON, Aug. 29 - Senator John Edwards, the Democratic vice-presidential nominee, said on Sunday that President Bush's concession that he had made a "miscalculation" about the occupation of Iraq gave the Kerry campaign a new theme for the remaining 65 days of the campaign: a chance to catalog other missteps that the Democrats say Mr. Bush has yet to acknowledge.<snip>

(Bush...admitting he 'miscalculated' on Iraq by winning too quickly)..."He's miscalculated in respect to North Korea, so instead of having one to two nuclear weapons, they now have six to eight," said Mr. Edwards, casually dressed in blue jeans and a khaki shirt. "He's miscalculated on Afghanistan, and now it is the center of drug trade again. And he miscalculated on intelligence reform," he said, accusing the president of waiting too long after the Sept. 11 attacks to overhaul the nation's intelligence apparatus. <snip>

In similar comments to Time magazine, published on Sunday, Mr. Bush called the insurgency the result of the "catastrophic success" of the military operation in the early days of the invasion. In both interviews, he took the position that victory was so swift that Mr. Hussein's loyalists had time to melt back into the cities and towns and re-emerge for the insurgency.

Mr. Edwards laughed at Mr. Bush's argument. "He ran the war, he's responsible, and had this gone well he'd be taking the credit for it," the senator said. "What Americans need to know is that we would handle these problems very differently. It's sometimes hard to get that through, but we will get it through in the fall."