BERLIN, June 26: Germany’s foreign minister said on Monday it was inconceivable that the six powers that made an offer of incentives to Iran to encourage it to give up uranium enrichment would wait another two months for a response.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said last week Iran would deliver its answer on the package by August 22, prompting US President George Bush to accuse Tehran of dragging its feet.

“They have had the offer for two weeks already,” Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier told Reuters in an interview on the sidelines of a Social Democrat (SPD) disarmament conference.

“I hope a decision will be made soon in Tehran. I can’t imagine we would wait until August 22,” he said.

A package of incentives designed to resolve the standoff with the Islamic republic was drawn up by the six powers — Germany and the United Nation’s Security Council permanent members France, Britain, the United States, Russia and China.

Steinmeier said earlier at the SPD disarmament conference that resolving the crisis with Iran was vital to prevent a Cold War-style nuclear arms race from developing in the Middle East.

He said the same went for Asia if a clash with North Korea, which claims to have developed atomic weapons, is not resolved.

“If there’s no resolution to the North Korea and Iran conflicts, then there will be a new nuclear arms race in the Middle East and Asia,” he said.

In the case of Iran, it also concerned the protection of Israel, Steinmeier said.

President Ahmadinejad has called for Israel to be ‘wiped off the map’ and has repeatedly expressed doubt that the Holocaust happened.

Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), also spoke at the SPD conference and said the UN Security Council had not had a good track record on dealing with the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

“If I look at the action in the case of North Korea ... you ended up with North Korea not even being discussed by the Security Council and with North Korea walking away from the (NPT) without the council even meeting to discuss the implications of that decision,” ElBaradei said.

“We ended up with North Korea saying ‘we have nuclear weapons’. That record over the last 15 years is not one that makes one very optimistic,” he said.—Reuters