U.N. Powers to Unify on Iran, Germany Says

Germany and the five permanent U.N. Security Council member nations intend in talks next week to demonstrate their determination not to let Iran acquire nuclear weapons, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said yesterday (see GSN, Jan. 17).

“There are open questions which Iran urgently needs to resolve to re-establish lost trust.  It remains the case that the international community cannot and will not permit nuclear weapons technology to be developed in this region,” Steinmeier said.

“We will be meeting in Berlin in a few days time with the respective Security Council members to debate how we can express demonstrable unity on these questions in the future,” he said. 

Steinmeier planned to meet with International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei to discuss potential solutions to the standoff over Tehran’s nuclear program, which Western powers have suspected is aimed at developing nuclear weapons, Reuters reported.

Germany supports new Security Council sanctions against Iran over its refusal to halt uranium enrichment and comply with other U.N. demands, but Steinmeier said the world powers must also consider U.S. intelligence indications that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003.

“Recently we have seen new estimates on the status of research and development work (in Iran),” he said. “In this connection it is of course important what the (U.S. National Intelligence Estimate) has expressed.”

“The NIE told us nothing we did not know, but the Russians understood that it meant the United States was not going to attack Iran anytime soon,” Steinmeier said.  That reduced Moscow’s interest in pursuing a third round of sanctions against Iran.

U.S. Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte said that new sanctions remain necessary despite the U.S. intelligence assessment.

“It's important that there be an additional Security Council resolution, because Iran is out of compliance with previously passed resolutions,” he said.

“It is no secret that we would have liked to have another sanctions resolution by this point in time,” said State Department spokesman Sean McCormack.  “Our intention is to continue to push along with our allies for a Security Council resolution at the earliest possible date” (Mark Heinrich, Reuters/Yahoo!News, Jan. 18).

China yesterday asked Iran to begin new negotiations with European nations and other world powers over its nuclear program, Agence France-Presse reported.

“The Iranian nuclear issue is now at a crucial moment,” Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi said yesterday in a meeting with top Iranian nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili, according to remarks released by the Chinese Foreign Ministry.

“China hopes all concerned parties, including Iran, make joint efforts to resume negotiations as soon as possible in a bid to promote the comprehensive and proper settlement of this issue” (Agence France-Presse I/Google News, Jan. 18).

The White House said yesterday that U.S. President George W. Bush backs the U.S. intelligence estimate released last month on Iran when the assessment is considered in its entirety.

The statement followed remarks by Bush earlier this week suggesting he did not endorse the report’s conclusions.

“The president stands by the full scope of the findings in that they were put together by incredibly dedicated people that did their best work and put their best views out,” said White House spokesman Tony Fratto.

“He does encourage people — and that’s the point that he made repeatedly on his trip — to look at the full conclusions and implications for what the NIE asserted in those conclusions, and they include the fact that Iran had a weapons program,” Fratto said (Agence France-Presse II/Google News, Jan. 17).

Meanwhile, a third shipment of Russian nuclear fuel arrived today at Iran’s Bushehr nuclear power reactor, RIA Novosti reported (see GSN, Jan. 2).

Under a contract with the Iranian government, Russia is expected to send Iran eight nuclear fuel shipments totaling 82 metric tons before the end of February.

The first fuel shipment to Bushehr arrived on Dec. 16, 2007, after repeated delays in the plant’s construction that the Russian contractor Atomstroiexport attributed to Iran’s failure to keep up with payments.  Iran said that Western powers were pressuring Moscow to delay the project (RIA Novosti, Jan. 18).

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