THE Group of Eight industrialised nations set a deadline of July 5 yesterday for Iran to give a “clear and substantive response” to an offer of incentives for it to scale back its nuclear programme.

But Iran said that it needed until August, threatening to drive a wedge between the G8 members in the run-up to the group’s annual summit in St Petersburg from July 15 to July 17.

At the same time G8 foreign ministers failed to agree on how to respond if Iran did not reply, or turned down the June 6 offer from the United States, Britain, France, China, Russia and Germany.

The foreign ministers also bowed to Russian pressure not to mention Moscow’s recent moves to curb democracy, setting the tone for the G8 leaders’ summit in St Petersburg.

Critics of the Kremlin had called for Western leaders to boycott the summit because of President Putin’s moves to re-assert central control over parliament, the national media and the energy industry.

At the very least, they want Western officials to publicly criticise Russia for falling short of the G8 membership criteria of being a democracy and a stable, liberal market economy.

But Russian democracy was not even mentioned during the meeting, which was dominated by Iran. A statement issued afterwards said: “We are disappointed by the absence of an official Iranian response to this positive proposal.

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