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IAEA Motion on Iran “Positive First Step,” Bush Says
The call yesterday by the International Atomic Energy Agency’s governing board for Iran to reinstate its nuclear freeze was a “positive first step,” said U.S. President George W. Bush (see GSN, Aug. 11). “The world is coalescing around the notion that the Iranians should not have the means and the wherewithal to be able to develop a nuclear weapon,” Bush said yesterday (Reuters, Aug. 11). Iran’s Foreign Ministry dismissed the IAEA resolution as “political,” the Associated Press reported today. “It comes from American pressure. ... It lacks any legal or logical basis and is unacceptable,” said Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi. Tehran’s top IAEA delegate, Sirus Naseri, also dismissed the ruling and said Iran would be a “nuclear fuel producer and supplier within a decade.” Naseri added, however, that Tehran did “not leave the door closed to (the Europeans)” and would temporarily maintain a suspension on uranium enrichment “to give a chance for negotiations” (William Kole, Associated Press/WINK TV, Aug. 12). Iran is not likely to accept a South African offer to enrich uranium for Tehran’s nuclear energy program, a senior Iranian official said yesterday. “This is not going to happen. Iran wants to have the nuclear fuel cycle,” he said. A senior European diplomat in Tehran was also skeptical, Reuters reported. “It’s a nonstarter. It doesn’t sound viable in a practical sense. It would allow Iran to master a key part of the fuel cycle (UF6 production), which is precisely what we do not want,” the diplomat said. Another European diplomat, however, said International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei was “very keen” on the idea (Reuters, Aug. 11). U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan said yesterday he would use next month’s summit in New York to arrange a meeting between Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Western leaders if the nuclear standoff is not resolved by then. “It will be a way for all of us to collectively talk to them,” Annan told Reuters. More than 170 world leaders are expected at the meeting, set to address issues including terrorism and nuclear proliferation (Evelyn Leopold, Reuters, Aug. 11). The United States is likely to grant a visa to Ahmadinejad for the meeting, the Washington Post reported today. No evidence has been found that Ahmadinejad was involved in the taking of hostages at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran in 1979, according to a classified U.S. intelligence report distributed within the administration yesterday. “There is relative certainty that he was not one of the actual captors,” said a U.S. official familiar with the allegations, made by at least four former hostages (Robin Wright, Washington Post, Aug. 12).
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