Ahmadinejad proposes new solutions to Bush

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has written to President George Bush proposing “new solutions” to their differences in the first letter from an Iranian leader to an American president in 27 years, government spokesman Gholam-Hossein Elham said today.

The letter was sent via the Swiss Embassy in Tehran which has a US interests section, Elham told a press conference.

In the letter, Ahmadinejad proposes “new solutions for getting out of international problems and current fragile situation of the world”, Elham said.

It is the first time that an Iranian president has written to his US counterpart since 1979, when the two countries broke relations after Iranian militants stormed the US Embassy and held the occupants hostage for more than a year.

Yesterday, Ahmadinejad renewed Iran’s threat to withdraw from the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty if the UN Security Council imposes sanctions over its nuclear programme.

Elham did not mention the nuclear dispute – the major issue on which Washington and Tehran are at loggerheads. The United States is leading Western efforts to pass a UN Security Council motion censuring Iran for refusing to cease enrichment of uranium.