Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Writes A Letter

Iran's president declared in a letter to President Bush that democracy had failed worldwide and lamented "an ever-increasing global hatred" of the U.S. government. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice swiftly rejected the letter, saying it didn't resolve questions about Tehran's suspect nuclear program. "This letter is not the place that one would find an opening to engage on the nuclear issue or anything of the sort," Rice said in an interview with The Associated Press. "It isn't addressing the issues that we're dealing with in a concrete way."

Rice's comments were the most detailed response from the United States to the letter, the first from an Iranian head of state to an American president since the 1979 hostage crisis at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran. The letter from President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad made only an oblique reference to Iran's nuclear intentions, asking why "any technological and scientific achievement reached in the Middle East region is translated into and portrayed as a threat to the Zionist regime."

Otherwise, it lambasted Bush for his handling of the Sept. 11 attacks, accused the media of spreading lies about the Iraq war and railed against the United States for its support of Israel. It questioned whether the world would be a different place if the money spent on Iraq had been spent to fight poverty. "Would not your administration's political and economic standing have been stronger?" the letter said. "And I am most sorry to say, would there have been an ever- increasing global hatred of the American government?

Ahmadinejad on Tuesday called his letter "words and opinions of the Iranian nation" aimed at finding a "way out of problems" facing humanity, according to the official Iranian news agency. He spoke briefly before boarding a plane for Indonesia, where he was to attend a summit of developing nations.

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Most of Iran's newspapers devoted their front pages to Ahmadinejad's message on Tuesday. "Ahmadinejad's letter, an initiative in global diplomacy," read a headline in the hard-line daily Resalat. The moderate daily Shargh, or East, said the message may open a new page in relations with the United States. But a conservative lawmaker lambasted Ahmadinejad for failing to consult parliament before he sent the letter. "This message is the outcome of a series of taboo-breaking behaviors in Iran's foreign policy. ... That the parliament is not aware of (the contents of the) letter is questionable," Hashmatollah Falahatpisheh told an open session of the parliament broadcast live on state-run radio Tuesday.