Ahmadinejad made the surprise announcement in an interview today on the al-Jazeera network’s popular news program, “The Situation Cave.”
“My country is fully prepared to dismantle our peaceful nuclear program, once and for all,” Ahmadinejad said. “In compensation for doing so, we would like to have North Korea’s highly warlike nuclear program transferred to Iran at once.”
There was no official response from the U.S. State Department to Ahmadinejad’s surprise offer, but diplomatic insiders said that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was taking a “close look” at the proposal.
But the Iranian proposal got a thumbs-up from North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Il, who said that he would “happily” transfer his nuclear capability to Iran in exchange for the U.S. nuclear program.
At the White House, spokesperson Tony Snow scheduled a special press briefing to call Kim’s proposal a “deal-breaker” and used the occasion to clarify the White House’s position on the nuclear programs in Iran and North Korea.
“Regarding Iran and North Korea’s nuclear programs, we will continue to pursue the same policy we have been pursuing,” Mr. Snow said. “And by that I mean, doing nothing.”
Elsewhere, Discovery astronauts made repairs on the International Space Station during a seven-hour spacewalk, six hours of which were spent on hold with a tech support representative in Bangalore.
