|
|||||
|
|||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||
 |
 |
    |
|
|
|||
 |
|
||
|
|||
|
|
|
|
||||||||
|
EU-Iran Talks Resume Tomorrow; Little Hope Held for Progress
There is little hope for progress on nuclear negotiations with Iran among European Union diplomats as France, Germany and the United Kingdom prepared to resume the stalled talks tomorrow in Vienna, Reuters reported yesterday (see GSN, Dec. 19). Another diplomat was more pointed. “It’s going to be an opportunity to see really whether there’s anything left to talk about,” the diplomat said (Louis Charbonneau, Reuters/Yahoo!News, Dec. 19). An impasse in this week’s talks could lead to a renewed effort by Brussels and Washington to refer Iran to the U.N. Security Council for possible sanctions, Agence France-Presse reported. Iran, meanwhile, has warned it would retaliate to referral by immediately resuming uranium enrichment. Top Iranian nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani said yesterday that the EU talks would have to focus on ways to ensure that “Iran’s enrichment is not diverted” to weapons efforts. Iran’s enrichment suspension should be lifted as soon as possible, said Hossein Entezami, a spokesman for the Supreme National Security Council (Agence France-Presse I/SpaceWar.com, Dec. 20). U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice yesterday reaffirmed her support for EU diplomatic efforts with Iran, AFP reported (Agence France-Presse I/SpaceWar.com, Dec. 19). In Moscow, Russian officials have not found any indications of Iranian efforts to develop nuclear weapons, the head of the nation’s Foreign Intelligence Service told Interfax yesterday. “We attentively observe what is going on around Iran and report on this to our leadership. … At the moment we have no information to suggest Iran is developing nuclear weapons,” Sergei Lebedev said (Agence France-Presse II/SpaceWar.com, Dec. 19). Meanwhile, diplomats at the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna have said that Tehran is already preparing to resume uranium enrichment. One diplomat said Iran has continued to make parts for advanced P-2 centrifuges. “Production has continued without interruption ever since this capability was acquired,” the diplomat told AFP. An Iranian diplomat said this was “not true, not yet” but admitted that “Iran has the capacity to make P-2 centrifuges.” The first diplomat said Iran was producing centrifuges at military installations, which “do not come under IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) safeguards, and Iran has not declared all these parts.” The agency does not “have a clue” what Iran is doing at those military sites, said a diplomat from a member state of the agency’s Board of Governors. “Iran has the machine tools to enable them to churn out many P-2 centrifuges a day, and the IAEA would have no idea,” the diplomat said. Research and development in enrichment “is indeed the key phrase, and conceivably Iran’s strategy is to secure Europe’s agreement to engage in R and D,” the first diplomat said. The diplomat added that Iran was working on an incremental approach to winning acceptance of its enrichment activities, as Tehran did with conversion. Nonproliferation expert David Albright said that running a cascade of centrifuges would help Iran “work out other major (technical) problems.” “You don’t want Iran to start running cascades because the question then is, once they’ve started, can you get them to back down?” Albright said (Agence France-Presse III/SpaceWar.com, Dec. 19). U.S. President George W. Bush said yesterday that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s most recent anti-Israel rhetoric has demonstrated why Tehran should not be allowed to develop nuclear weapons, AFP reported. “People know that an Iran with the capacity to manufacture a nuclear weapon is not in the world’s interest. That’s universally accepted,” Bush said. “And that should be accepted universally, particularly after what the president recently said about the desire to annihilate, for example, an ally of the United States,” he said. “We cannot allow the Iranians to have the capacity to enrich (uranium),” Bush added (Agence France-Presse IV/SpaceWar.com, Dec. 19).
| ||||||||||
Back to top
