Iran Indicates Possibility of Nuclear Freeze

Iran has said it might be ready to temporarily accede to a U.N. Security Council demand to freeze its uranium enrichment activities, the Associated Press reported today (see GSN, Sept. 8).

Top Iranian nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani told European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana during talks this weekend that Tehran could consider halting enrichment “voluntarily, for one or two months, if presented ... in such a way that it does it without pressure,” a diplomat said.

Larijani and Solana agreed to meet again later this week.

Solana was expected to brief senior officials of the world powers today, according to one diplomat.

The United Kingdom and the United States have insisted that Iran freeze all sensitive nuclear activities before any nuclear negotiations with the world powers commence.  State Department spokeswoman Janelle Hironimus confirmed that the teleconference between the six nations would proceed as scheduled today, and that that a debate on sanctions would begin later in the week at the United Nations.

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton failed to mention Larijani’s reported comments on a nuclear freeze during a speech in Washington.

“The Iranians have continued to make absolutely plain they don’t intend to give up uranium enrichment,” Bolton said.

“I am convinced that the tactics the Iranians are using are going to come back to haunt them, that people will see this is simply a stalling technique,” he said (George Jahn, Associated Press I/Yahoo!News, Sept. 11).

The Iranian ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency denied yesterday that Iran was considering an enrichment suspension, Agence France-Presse reported.

“Such a thing has not been discussed” during the Larijani-Solana talks, said Ali Asghar Soltanieh, who attended the meeting (Agence France-Presse I/IranMania.com, Sept. 10).

Larijani expressed optimism after the talks with Solana, AFP reported today.

“We had good discussions and ambiguities have been cleared up and we have agreed [on] certain principles.  This shows that common ground is increasing which can help resolve certain questions,” he said (Agence France-Presse II/Yahoo!News, Sept. 11).

U.N. Deputy Secretary General Mark Malloch Brown said the Security Council has reached a “watershed moment” regarding possible sanctions on Iran, AFP reported.

Iran has expressed a “willingness to negotiate,” Malloch Brown told CNN’s “Late Edition.”  “And when [Secretary General] Kofi Annan was a few days ago in Iran, that was repeated to him by the president and others.”

“Nevertheless, Iran has not complied with what has been a minimum condition of the Security Council resolution and of all the international negotiators, which is that its enrichment program be suspended while negotiations take place,” he added.  “So clearly we are now moving to a critical showdown moment when some kind of enforcement action has to get under way in the Security Council” (Agence France-Presse III/IranMania.com, Sept. 10).

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said yesterday that Washington would focus on limiting Iran’s international financial transactions rather than its oil exports, AFP reported.

“We believe that the key here is, perhaps, on the financial side,” she told CNN.

“There are things that you can do to cut off financing to Iran’s programs, to make clear to Iran that it will not be able to take advantage of the international financial system in the way it needs to to be able to use those proceeds from oil,” she said.

Rice added that she was “quite, quite certain” that the Security Council’s permanent members would support sanctions.  She said those five countries along with Germany had developed a list of potential sanctions that could be implemented gradually (Agence France-Presse IV/Yahoo!News, Sept. 10).

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said he remained hopeful that Iran would halt uranium enrichment, AFP reported today.

“Hope remains,” Lavrov said in an interview published in the Russian daily Vremya Novostei.

Sanctions “remains in the arsenal of the international community, in that there is no doubt,” he said.

However, Lavrov expressed skepticism about the effectiveness of sanctions.

“What can we achieve by sanctions?  Only that Iran and the Security Council will be forced into a corner,” he said (Agence France-Presse V/IranMania.com, Sept. 11).

Meanwhile, a diplomat close to the International Atomic Energy Agency said little action is expected today when its governing receives a report on Iran’s nuclear program, AFP reported.

“No one expects any fireworks,” the diplomat told AFP (Michael Adler, Agence France-Presse VI/Yahoo!News, Sept. 11).

British Prime Minister Tony Blair warned against ignoring Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s threats against Israel, AP reported.

“When you have the president of a country as powerful as Iran say those things, it may be very foolish of us to assume he doesn’t mean them.  And when he’s also trying to acquire a nuclear weapon, then I think the warning signs are pretty clear,” Blair told the Israeli daily Haaretz.  “If we don’t get worried about that, future historians will raise a few questions about us and about our judgment” (Associated Press II/International Herald Tribune, Sept. 11).

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