The Prime Minister's Office yesterday denied that Ehud Olmert had told a German magazine Iran's disputed nuclear program could be severely hit by firing 1,000 cruise missiles during a 10-day attack. The weekly news magazine Focus said its reporter, Amir Taheri, asked Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in an interview whether military action would be an option if Iran continued to defy the United Nations. It quoted Olmert as responding: "Nobody is ruling it out.
"It is impossible perhaps to destroy the entire nuclear program but it would be possible to damage it in such a way that it would be set back years," Focus quoted Olmert as saying. "It would take 10 days and would involve the firing of 1,000 Tomahawk cruise missiles," it quoted him as saying.
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| Olmert's spokeswoman, Miri Eisen, said the prime minister had spoken to the author of the Focus article, but she said Olmert did not make the comments that were attributed to him. Eisen said the meeting was not an interview and was conducted for background purposes, on the understanding that it would not be used.
However, Taheri said, "It was clear to all sides that this was an interview." He said he had not recorded the conversation, but had taken notes during and after the encounter. "Olmert's bureau recorded the meeting," he said.
Taheri stood by his interview but clarified that the prime minister was not threatening Iran, but rather discussing a theoretical possibility only. Taheri said he was sorry about the media storm over the article, and he had instructed the magazine to remove the summary of the interview from its Internet site because "it was sensationalist and took Olmert's statements - which were mentioned in passing - out of context." Taheri said the Internet edition had published only part of Olmert's statements.
Ulrich Schmidla, a foreign affairs editor at Focus magazine, said the interview would be published in full and with no changes, with Taheri's approval, in tomorrow's issue. Taheri, a freelance reporter, was a regular contributor to Focus, he added. Schmidla also said, "The reason we took the article off the Web site is because it focused unfairly on the military option, although Olmert had stressed the importance of negotiations."
Alaeddin Broujerdi, head of the Iranian parliament's national security and foreign policy commission, dismissed Olmert's reported comments. "Naturally this bragging by Olmert is not something that can actually take place in practice," Broujerdi was quoted as saying by the ISNA news agency. "If America and Israel ever made such a mistake, they know better than anyone else what the consequences would be."
Focus quoted Olmert as saying UN sanctions should be given a chance to work before military action was considered. "We must give the (UN) process time to take effect," it quoted him as saying. "We have no intention of attacking Iran at the moment."
Olmert was also quoted as saying he doubted whether Iran's nuclear program was as far advanced as Tehran said. "I don't think that Iran is about to cross the nuclear technology threshold as its leaders claim," he was quoted as saying. "We still have time to stop them."
Taheri, an Iranian exile living in Europe, is known as a harsh critic of the regime in Tehran. Last year the Canadian National Post had to publish a retraction of a mistake based on an article by Taheri stating that the Iranian Parliament had passed a law requiring Jews to wear a yellow star. |
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