Europeans Plan Incentives, as Iran Says Sanctions Wont Halt Nuclear Program
European countries are planning to offer new incentives to Iran if it agrees to halt its uranium enrichment program, European diplomats said Monday. Meanwhile at the United Nations, Iran's ambassador said that his country would continue to defy Security Council directives to halt the program, and that documents cited as possible evidence of Iran's effort to develop nuclear weapons were "forgeries.' The Security Council is expected to vote in the coming days on a third resolution to tighten sanctions against Iran. The European plan is the latest part of the West's long-running and so far unsuccessful carrot-and-stick strategy aimed at getting Iran to abandon its nuclear ambitions. The diplomats outlined the plan after a meeting at the State Department, where top officials from Britain, France, China, Russia, Germany and the United States discussed their Iran strategy. While the United States is not opposed to the European plan to offer a few more incentives to Iran, Bush administration officials said that at this point the United States did not plan to join the proposal. A senior State Department official said the United States was hoping that the "stick' part of the Iran strategy