Delaying mc question

I have a ball rotating in my flash. the ball is divided by 8 parts and in each part the ball stops rotating and stays in "hold" for couple of seconds before rotating to the next part.

The ball also has 2 buttons in which a script tells them to go either to the next part of the ball, or the previos one. The purpose of this is to let the customer go to the part he wants to check with more detail and, if nobody touches the buttons, the ball is gonna keep rotating briefly stopping to show part of the content in the ball.

This the script Im using for the ball and its pause:

PHP Code:

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this.stop();
setTimeout(this, "play", 3000); 


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and this is the code in one of the buttons

PHP Code:

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on (release) {
if (_currentframe == 10) {
gotoAndStop(1);
} else {
nextFrame();
}
} 


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The problem is that the set time out is going faster and faster in each of the pauses it has to do. If I take away the code from the buttons then it works fine... Help please