Officials: U.S. Rebuffs Europe on Iran Nuke Talks

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States has rebuffed pleas to join a European diplomatic drive to persuade Iran to give up any ambitions to add nuclear bombs to its arsenal, U.S. officials and foreign diplomats say.
For months, Britain, France and Germany have hoped to improve their bargaining power with the Islamic republic by involving Washington in a proposed accord over an end to its uranium enrichment activities.
That effort has intensified since President Bush's re-election in November, culminating last week with ministerial visits to Condoleezza Rice days before she took up her new post as secretary of state, they said.
So far, the Americans show no sign of giving ground.
"It's what they (the Europeans) have always wanted to do," a senior Bush administration official said. "(British Foreign Secretary) Jack (Straw) came over hoping Condi would change our policy and she didn't."
A senior State Department official said Straw, who visited on Monday, one day before Germany's Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer came on a similar mission, outlined European hopes for the negotiations.
The idea of getting the Bush administration into the talks "is in the air," he said.
"But we have not been (formally) asked yet and when we are, we will say, 'What good would it do?"'
The United States takes a harder line than the Europeans and wants Iran, which Bush grouped in an "axis of evil" with pre-war Iraq and North Korea, to be reported to the U.N. Security Council for possible international sanctions.
U.S. officials say that would increase pressure on Iran and push council members China and Russia to curtail arms and energy deals, respectively, which Washington believes could boost the Islamic republic's nuclear capability.
Iran denies U.S. charges it is pursuing a nuclear bomb and says its programs are only for peaceful power generation needed to keep up with its growing population