Iran biggest future challenge, says US strategy update

An updated version of the Bush Administration8217;s national security strategy...

An updated version of the Bush Administration8217;s national security strategy, the first in over three years, gives no ground on the decision to order a pre-emptive attack on Iraq in 2003, and identifies Iran as the country likely to present the single greatest future challenge to the US.

The strategy document declares that US-led diplomacy to halt Iran8217;s programme to enrich nuclear fuel 8220;must succeed if confrontation is to be avoided,8221; a near final draft of the document says. But it carefully avoids spelling out what steps the US might take if diplomacy fails, and it makes no such direct threat of confrontation with North Korea, which boasts that it has developed nuclear weapons.

When asked about the omission in an interview, Stephen J Hadley, Bush8217;s national security adviser and the principal author of the new report, said, 8220;The sentence applies to both Iran and North Korea.8221;

The 48-page draft of the new 8220;National Security Strategy of the United States,8221; which was released by the White House on Thursday, is an effort to both expand on and assess the security strategy published by the administration in September 2002, a year after the terrorist attacks against New York and the Pentagon upended US foreign policy.

But in a reflection of new challenges, the document also covers territory that the first strategy sidestepped, warning China, for example, against 8220;old ways of thinking and acting8221; in its competition for energy resources.

The administration expresses worry that Russia is falling off the path to democracy that Bush spent much of his first term celebrating. In a much tougher tone than the 2002 document, it emphasises that the future of the relationship with Russia 8220;will depend on the policies, foreign and domestic, that Russia adopts.8221;

Hadley said the effort was not intended to formulate new strategy, but to 8220;take stock of what has been accomplished and describe the new challenges we face.8221;

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But chief among the sections that remain unchanged is the most controversial section of the 2002 strategy: the elevation of pre-emptive strikes to a central part of US strategy. 8220;The world is better off if tyrants know that they pursue WMD at their own peril,8221; the strategy says. It acknowledges misjudgments about Iraq8217;s weapons programme that preceded the invasion three years ago, but it is clearly unwilling to give ground on that decision. 8212;DAVID E SANGER