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U.S. Presses for New Iran Sanctions
The Bush administration plans to continue pushing for new sanctions against At a meeting of six world powers scheduled for Tuesday, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is expected to argue that new sanctions are necessary in response to The State Department said yesterday that it would not alter its plan to press for new sanctions despite a report by the Government Accountability Office challenging the impact of the measures. “The whole strategy here is to use various kinds of diplomatic pressure at a gradually increasing rate to try to get a different set of decisions out of the Iranian leadership,” said State Department spokesman Sean McCormack. McCormack declined to guess whether the foreign ministers from Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte said a U.S. intelligence assessment released last month indicated that Iran has suspended only its warhead design program while moving forward with uranium enrichment work and development of missiles that could carry a nuclear weapon. “Work continues by Iran on two out of those three parts of that program,” Negroponte said in Beijing today before he attended talks to press a Chinese counterpart to support a new round of sanctions (Matthew Lee, Associated Press/Google News, Jan. 17). “We think it is important that there be an additional Security Council resolution because “On the Iranian nuclear issue, [China’s] position is consistent. We hope that Iran will abide by (an existing) U.N. resolution and demonstrate flexibility and work with the international community,” said Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu. “We also hope the international community will intensify diplomatic efforts for an early resumption of negotiations,” she said. Top Iranian nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili was also in “The two countries will exchange views on bilateral relations and the nuclear issue,” Jiang said (Agence France-Presse I/Google News, Jan. 17). Jalili said today that Western powers have failed to pressure The West has suspected that Iran’s nuclear program is aimed at developing nuclear weapons. Iran has insisted that its nuclear activities are intended solely for civilian energy development. “Those countries who so far have been after imposing sanctions and putting pressure on Iran have not achieved any success,” Jalili told Iranian state media. “Today, global developments and Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Ali Bagheri said yesterday that international suspicions about Iranian nuclear intentions could soon be cleared up, AFP reported. “We think the conditions and circumstances are quite favorable and we are getting ready to solve the (nuclear) issue once and for all,” Bagheri told reporters. Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, has “showed that some of the problems related to the nuclear issue have been solved,” he said (Agence France-Presse II/Google News, Jan. 16). However, the U.S. envoy to the U.N. nuclear watchdog yesterday expressed skepticism that Iran is willing to disclose enough information on its nuclear program’s past to answer all of the agency’s outstanding questions in time to meet a deadline next month. “We are disappointed that “We always supported the IAEA and [ElBaradei] in trying to move forward with this work plan. But we've always been worried that Iran is using the work plan to try to buy time,” Schulte said, referring to an agreement reached by Iran and the agency last year for Tehran to gradually disclose information on its past nuclear activities. “Full cooperation means they need to come clean with their past, they need to explain these nuclear weapon activities they have, and they need to commit to giving full insight into the present, concluding by implementing the Additional Protocol,” which would allow IAEA inspectors to conduct short-notice audits of all Iranian nuclear sites (Agence France-Presse III/Google News, Jan. 16).
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