[New York Times] Steven Lee Myers and Thom Shanker - The Bush administration expressed confidence on Tuesday that it had rallied international support to intensify diplomatic and economic pressure on Iran. Senior administration officials now increasingly express chagrin that last week's National Intelligence Estimate incorrectly focused on the suspension of a secret weapons program and not on the accelerated effort to enrich uranium. That undercut the administration's main rationale for confronting Iran, and left the administration seeking to regain the diplomatic initiative for continued sanctions. Acknowledging this, administration officials said that a UN vote on new sanctions, originally scheduled for this month, would most likely be deferred until next year. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said, "We're not talking about whether or not there's going to be a resolution [to tighten sanctions on Iran], but we're talking about what are the elements to a new Security Council resolution."
2007-12-13 01:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive