No Nuclear Freeze, Iran Says

Iran today reaffirmed its refusal to suspend its uranium enrichment program, with one official describing Western demands to do so as “unprincipled,” the Associated Press reported (see GSN, May 29).

Lead Iranian nuclear envoy Ali Larijani spoke to reporters on the eve of talks with EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana in Madrid.  With U.S. backing, the European Union has been seeking talks to resolve the Iranian nuclear crisis, but the Western nations and the U.N. Security Council have demanded that Tehran freeze its sensitive nuclear activities before beginning those negotiations.

“Suspension is not the right solution for solving Iran's nuclear issue,” Larijani said.  “Past experiences have shown that suspension is not acceptable, at all.”

He said Iran would cooperate with the International Atomic Energy Agency to demonstrate that its nuclear program was peaceful, but repeated that “if Iran is supposed to suspend its nuclear activities, there will be no issue for talks” (Nasser Karimi, Associated Press I/San Diego Union-Tribune, May 30).

IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei recently triggered protests from Western nations when he made comments suggesting that Iranian technical advances may have made the Western negotiating stance obsolete (see GSN, May 25).

However, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said yesterday that the U.S. position remains the same.

“We are firm about the need to suspend, we are firm about the need to continue to increase the pressure and we're firm that should Iran make a different choice we are prepared to go that way as well,” Rice told reporters in Berlin.

Changing that position “would be a very big mistake,” she added.

For ElBaradei, she counseled his silence.

“The IAEA is not an agency that is in negotiation with the Iranians,” Rice said while noting that the five permanent Security Council members plus Germany have taken the diplomatic lead.  “I just think it's appropriate for those six states to determine what the diplomatic course ought to be” (Anne Gearan, Associated Press II/Washington Post, May 29).

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