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Iran Passes Law on IAEA Access to Nuclear Sites
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad last week approved legislation that would limit international access to the country’s nuclear installations if the nation is reported to the U.N. Security Council, Agence France-Presse reported Saturday (see GSN, Dec. 16). Iran has demonstrated that it cannot be trusted with technology that could be used to produce a nuclear weapon, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said yesterday. “The more we hear from this Iranian government, the more that people recognize and acknowledge publicly that this is a government that shouldn’t expect the international community to trust them with technologies that might lead to a nuclear weapon,” Rice told Fox News (Agence France-Presse II/IranMania.com, Dec. 18). Meanwhile, Germany plans to ask the Security Council to punish Iran for anti-Israel comments made by Ahmadinejad last week, AFP reported Saturday. “We are looking at (possible) measures at the level of the U.N.,” Thomas de Mazieres, Chancellor Angela Merkel’s chief of staff, told the Welt am Sonntag newspaper. Germany would only seek U.N. action, however, if there was agreement within the European Union, said de Mazieres. Ahmadinejad’s remarks will jeopardize EU-Iran nuclear talks, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier warned in the Bild am Sonntag. “After the comments by the Iranian president, discussions on nuclear matters between Europeans and Iran are going to become difficult,” Steinmeier wrote (Agence France-Presse III/Yahoo!News, Dec. 17). Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi yesterday dismissed international condemnation of Ahmadinejad’s remarks as “emotional,” the Associated Press reported. “The West had a very emotional attitude about Ahmadinejad’s comments. Westerners have to learn to tolerate others’ opinion,” Asefi said. He added that Iran planned to present the European Union with new nuclear proposals. “We have not demanded anything excessive. The European side should not make an excessive demand either,” Asefi said. Top Iranian nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani said this week’s new round of talks would be “unconditional.” “Their problem is not with the atomic bomb, they want to thwart Iran’s scientific advancements,” he said (Nasser Karimi, Associated Press/Billings Gazette, Dec. 18). Israeli President Moshe Katsav accused the European Union on Sunday of showing weakness in the standoff, AFP reported. “The attempts of Europe to find a compromise with Iran are interpreted by the Iranian authorities as a sign of weakness and hesitation,” he said. “Iran is trying to exploit this weakness and hesitation, from Europe in particular, to move closer towards obtaining weapons of mass destruction,” he said (Agence France-Presse IIII/IranMania.com, Dec. 18). Elsewhere, Persian Gulf leaders today called for a nuclear weapon-free Middle East, but focused only on Israel for its failure to join the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, Reuters reported. Delegates said Tehran’s nuclear ambitions dominated the closed-door meeting of the Gulf Cooperation Council. A draft statement of the group’s resolution obtained by Reuters had included a call for Iran to cooperate with the International Atomic Energy Agency but was deleted from the final version. One Gulf official said the council — which consists of Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates — wanted to emphasize diplomacy in the case of Iran. “They opted for diplomacy so as not to alienate Tehran,” said the official. UAE Foreign Minister Rashid Abdullah al-Nuaimi said Gulf countries were, however, “extremely worried and concerned” about Iran’s Bushehr nuclear plant (Kandil/Hammond, Reuters, Dec. 19).
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