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Iran to Avoid Emergency IAEA Meeting
The United States and the European Union have decided not to push for an emergency International Atomic Energy Agency meeting even if Iran does not meet a Sept. 3 U.N. deadline to reinstate a nuclear freeze, Agence France-Presse reported yesterday (see GSN, Aug. 25). A Sept. 6 emergency meeting proposed by Washington that might have led to the referral of Iran’s case to the U.N. Security Council is “not going to take place,” a senior EU diplomat told AFP in Vienna. “With the Russians dead set against it, it’s not going to happen,” said a Western diplomat (Agence France-Presse/Yahoo!News, Aug. 25). Speaking today after a meeting in Vienna with IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei, new chief Iranian nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani said Tehran was not afraid of being sent to the Security Council. “With the power that Iran enjoys in the region, there is no way that Iran can be worried about the threat of the Security Council,” he said, according to Reuters. Iran plans within a month to offer a new proposal regarding its nuclear efforts. The plan is expected to include a call for adding nations to the EU-Iranian nuclear negotiations (Francois Murphy, Reuters, Aug. 25). “Based on what logic and agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency have the negotiations been limited and dependent on the three European countries?” Larijani said, according to AFP. The U.S. State Department immediately rejected the call for broader talks. “Any discussion of trying to change with whom they negotiate ... is really an attempt to change the subject,” said State Department spokesman Sean McCormack (Michael Adler, Agence France-Presse/Yahoo!News, Aug. 26). The European negotiating partners were unenthusiastic about Iran’s call for fresh talks, AP reported. There is “no basis for negotiation with Iran until they respond” to an IAEA resolution adopted earlier this month calling for suspension of nuclear activities at the Isfahan facility, the British Foreign Office announced (George Jahn, Associated Press/Yahoo!News, Aug. 26). Some analysts said that talks have reached an impasse, AFP reported. “It’s clear that the whole deal is stuck,” former IAEA official Georges Le Guelte told AFP. “The Iranians are saying: ‘we’ve left last year’s agreements but we can still negotiate what points are left.’ It’s staggering,” said Francois Heisbourg, head of France’s Foundation for Strategic Research. “Iran feels now ... that the wind is at their back and they can be more assertive than they have been in the past,” said Karim Sadjadpour, of the Brussels-based International Crisis Group. “It’s very difficult to have formal talks when there is no negotiating framework and no basis for negotiation,” said a European diplomat close to the talks (Agence France-Presse/SpaceWar.com, Aug. 25). An exiled Iranian opposition group said yesterday that Iran is “95-percent ready” to manufacture a nuclear weapon, AP reported. The EU “policy of appeasing the Iranian regime has to be abandoned,” said Ali Safawi, a member of the Paris-based National Council of Resistance of Iran. “If anything ... it is the regime (in Tehran) that has benefited from these talks” by buying time to diversify its nuclear program, Safawi said. He said Iran could have a nuclear bomb by 2007 (Robert Wielaard, Associated Press I/Pravda, Aug. 25).
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