LUXEMBOURG: The United States Secretary of State has ended a week-long visit to Europe with a warning to North Korea and Iran on nuclear weapons.
She told North Korea yesterday that it should return to disarmament talks and urged Iran to halt any activity that could lead to nuclear weapons production.
"The message is the same for both: give up nuclear weapons and life can be different," Dr Condoleezza Rice said.
Dr Rice was in Luxembourg, where she met the EU's foreign policy chief, Mr Javier Solana, and the prime minister and foreign minister of Luxembourg, which holds the EU presidency.
Dr Rice expressed support for the EU's diplomatic effort to persuade Iran to extend a moratorium on uranium enrichment and some other activities, adding that the US felt fully consulted on the European mission.
Luxembourg's foreign minister, Mr Jean Asselborn, said the EU's talks with Iran were moving forward, despite Tehran's declaration this week that it would not renounce nuclear technology, including uranium enrichment.
Mr Asselborn made clear, however, that the EU shared America's determination to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons.
"An ideal world would be a world without nuclear weapons," he said. "We in the European Union want to avoid that Iran develops nuclear weapons, which would be very dangerous for the region. We are negotiating with Iran to prevent such a development. The co-operation between the European Union and the United States is therefore very positive."
Mr Solana said he expected "positive news" within days from negotiations with Iran but Dr Rice said that no one could argue that trends in Iran were going in the right direction.
"The message to the Iranians is: you can have a different path with the international community if you are prepared not to go the route of a nuclear weapon and to dismantle whatever activities might be devoted to building a nuclear weapon under cover of civilian nuclear power," she said.
Yesterday's talks also focused on the Middle East peace process, EU-US co-operation in the western Balkans and Ukraine and relations with Russia.
Luxembourg's prime minister, Mr Jean-Claude Juncker, said the two sides also discussed the EU's move towards lifting its arms embargo on China but gave no indication of any diminution of transatlantic disagreement on the issue.
"I think I can say that our discussion allowed us to understand each other's points of view better and that we will continue our talks in the future," he said.
Mr Juncker described President Bush's visit to Europe later this month as "highly symbolic" and insisted that transatlantic tensions had eased greatly since the breach caused by the US-led invasion of Iraq.
"I can safely assure you today that the transatlantic relationship, which has known more difficult times months ago, is today as strong as ever and that the European Union is committed to working with our American partners in a very concrete way to address the challenges of this world," Mr Juncker said.
"After the president's visit to Brussels this month, the EU-US summit in June will be the next, very important moment in the transatlantic dialogue.
EU officials acknowledged that it was too soon to assess the impact of Dr Rice's fence-mending visit to Europe but expressed satisfaction at the more conciliatory tone adopted by the Bush administration at the start of its second term in office.
