WASHINGTON (AFP) — The United States warned Iran on Tuesday that December is "a very real deadline" after Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad dismissed an international ultimatum over its nuclear program.
The United States and France have explicitly said Tehran must accept a UN-drafted deal to swap enriched uranium for nuclear fuel by the end of the year or face the threat of further sanctions.
White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said that the P5+1, which gathers UN Security Council veto-wielding permanent members Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States with Germany, were all on board on the deadline.
"I think that the international community is united in this. This is not (just) something that the (US) president has said… This is something that the members of the P5+1 have said," Gibbs said.
"That's why we are at the point where we are now with the international community waiting to see and have been waiting to see for months whether Iran will live up to its responsibilities."
Earlier Tuesday Ahmadinejad again rejected the year-end deadline and delivered another broadside against Western pressure over its suspect nuclear activities.
"They say we have given Iran until the end of the Christian year. Who are they anyway? It is we who have given them an opportunity," Ahmadinejad said in a speech in the city of Shiraz carried live on state television.
Gibbs said "Mr. Ahmadinejad may not recognize, for whatever reason, the deadline that looms, but that is a very real deadline for the international community… It is in his control what Iran decides to do."
US President Barack Obama's administration has signaled that time is running out for Iran to seize its offer of diplomatic engagement for resolving nuclear and other issues.
It has raised the specter of a fourth round of UN sanctions, but will need to persuade Russia and China to drop their traditional reluctance to consider tougher measures.
Iran insists its nuclear programme is solely for civilian purposes and rejects Western suspicions that it is covertly trying to develop a bomb.
Tehran has rejected the US-backed International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) proposal to ship abroad low-grade nuclear fuel so it can be further enriched and returned to refuel a Tehran medical research reactor.