Iran's hardline president warned the West will suffer more than his country if it tries to stop Tehran's nuclear ambitions, vowing to press ahead with the program as the confrontation moved into the UN Security Council.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's comments on Thursday came as Tehran struck an increasingly threatening tone, with the top Iranian delegate to the UN atomic watchdog agency warning a day earlier that the US will face "harm and pain" if the Security Council becomes involved.
"They know that they are not capable of causing the least harm to Iranian people," Ahmadinejad said during a visit to Iran's western province of Lorestan, according to the ISNA news agency. "They will suffer more."
Ahmadinejad did not elaborate. Some diplomats saw the comments as a veiled threat to use oil as a weapon, though Iran's oil minister ruled out any decrease in production. Iran also has leverage with extremist groups in the Middle East that could harm US interests.
The move to the UN Security Council takes the standoff to a new level, but how much it escalates depends heavily on the council's first steps.
The EU's foreign ministers were to take stock yesterday of international efforts to get Iran to resolve concerns over its nuclear program -- an issue that is raising the prospect of UN sanctions against Tehran.
The International Atomic Energy Agency has referred Iran to the UN Security Council. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan insisted this week that "negotiations must continue" with Iran, but as the EU foreign ministers opened two days of informal talks, a senior EU official cautioned sanctions may lie ahead.
"At a later stage, sanctions of some kind can't be excluded. Let's wait and see what the Security Council does," the EU's foreign policy chief Javier Solana was quoted as saying by the Austrian daily Der Standard in an interview published yesterday.
"We are only at the beginning. I don't exclude sanctions but it depends on the type of sanctions. We certainly don't want to target the Iranian people," Solana was quoted as saying.
There was always time for diplomacy, Solana was quoted as saying, noting that the Security Council had a tough task ahead.
French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy yesterday urged Iran to return rapidly to "reason" as the standoff over its nuclear program moved to the UN Security Council.
ROLLER-COASTER RIDE: More than five earthquakes ranging from magnitude 4.4 to 5.5 on the Richter scale shook eastern Taiwan in rapid succession yesterday afternoon Back-to-back weather fronts are forecast to hit Taiwan this week, resulting in rain across the nation in the coming days, the Central Weather Administration said yesterday, as it also warned residents in mountainous regions to be wary of landslides and rockfalls. As the first front approached, sporadic rainfall began in central and northern parts of Taiwan yesterday, the agency said, adding that rain is forecast to intensify in those regions today, while brief showers would also affect other parts of the nation. A second weather system is forecast to arrive on Thursday, bringing additional rain to the whole nation until Sunday, it
LANDSLIDES POSSIBLE: The agency advised the public to avoid visiting mountainous regions due to more expected aftershocks and rainfall from a series of weather fronts A series of earthquakes over the past few days were likely aftershocks of the April 3 earthquake in Hualien County, with further aftershocks to be expected for up to a year, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Based on the nation’s experience after the quake on Sept. 21, 1999, more aftershocks are possible over the next six months to a year, the agency said. A total of 103 earthquakes of magnitude 4 on the local magnitude scale or higher hit Hualien County from 5:08pm on Monday to 10:27am yesterday, with 27 of them exceeding magnitude 5. They included two, of magnitude
CONDITIONAL: The PRC imposes secret requirements that the funding it provides cannot be spent in states with diplomatic relations with Taiwan, Emma Reilly said China has been bribing UN officials to obtain “special benefits” and to block funding from countries that have diplomatic ties with Taiwan, a former UN employee told the British House of Commons on Tuesday. At a House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee hearing into “international relations within the multilateral system,” former Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) employee Emma Reilly said in a written statement that “Beijing paid bribes to the two successive Presidents of the [UN] General Assembly” during the two-year negotiation of the Sustainable Development Goals. Another way China exercises influence within the UN Secretariat is
Taiwan’s first drag queen to compete on the internationally acclaimed RuPaul’s Drag Race, Nymphia Wind (妮妃雅), was on Friday crowned the “Next Drag Superstar.” Dressed in a sparkling banana dress, Nymphia Wind swept onto the stage for the final, and stole the show. “Taiwan this is for you,” she said right after show host RuPaul announced her as the winner. “To those who feel like they don’t belong, just remember to live fearlessly and to live their truth,” she said on stage. One of the frontrunners for the past 15 episodes, the 28-year-old breezed through to the final after weeks of showcasing her unique