Hamas threats on Israel ‘hurts Palestine’

US PRESIDENT George W Bush said yesterday the vision of a Palestinian state cannot be realised if a Hamas-led government refuses to renounce its desire to destroy Israel.

He also said Iran can have nuclear power, but not a nuclear weapon.

Mr Bush said it was too early to tell what path Hamas would choose.

“The conditions for peace and the conditions for a settlement will be up to Hamas to make the right decisions,” Bush said in an interview.

It was the president’s first interview after his State of the Union address, and Mr Bush offered a more ambitious hope for reducing America’s appetite for Mideast oil than he had in his speech.

“I believe in a relatively quick period of time, within my lifetime, we’ll be able to reduce if not end dependence on Middle Eastern oil by this new technology” of converting corn, wood, grasses and other products into ethanol, he said.

In his address last night, Mr Bush set a goal of reducing the nation’s Mideast oil imports by 75% by 2025.

“America’s addiction to oil is bad for this country,” the president said. “In order to remain competitive we’ve got to use technology to diversify away from dependence on oil.”

Mr Bush, a onetime Texas oilman, offered no complaint about the huge profits of energy giant Exxon Mobil Corp, which reported record profits of more than e8.9 billion this week for the fourth quarter of 2005.

“There is a marketplace in American society,” he said.

Asked if oil companies should give Americans a break on prices, he said, “Well, I think that basically the price is determined by the marketplace and that’s the way it should be.”

“There’s also a responsibility for energy companies to continue to invest and improve the ways that the American people can get energy,” he said.

“I would very much hope that Exxon would participate in the development of a pipeline out of Alaska, for example, in order to make sure there’s more natural gas available for families and small business owners so the economy will grow.”

Mr Bush was asked about Iran in view of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s vow to resist the pressure of “bully countries” as European nations circulated a draft resolution urging that Tehran be brought before the UN Security Council for its nuclear activities.

“We cannot afford to have Iran with a nuclear weapon,” Mr Bush said. “We want them to have nuclear power but under the conditions that we describe.”