Thu, Feb 11, 2010 page1

• Official says time ‘running out’ for Iran diplomacy

  TENSION MOUNTS The US president said the world must be prepared to pressure Iran to change course, even if the ‘door is still open’ to negotiations

  • AFP
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  Washington could soon abandon its diplomatic approach to Iran’s nuclear program in favor of tougher action, a senior US official warned yesterday.

  The major world powers of the UN Security Council permanent five plus Germany have been using a “dual track approach” of negotiations and punitive action to persuade the Islamic republic to stop enriching uranium.

  “We had a dual track but it is less and less likely that we are going to be able to maintain that dual track and not move to the pressure track very soon,” said Ellen Tauscher, US Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security.

  

  Members of the Basij militia protest outside the French embassy in Tehran on Tuesday. Dozens of pro-regime militants demonstrated outside EU embassies to protest Europe’s attitude toward Iran’s nuclear program.

  PHOTO: AFP

  “We are running out of time to do what is right ... and to ease the tension in the region,” she told reporters during a trip to NATO headquarters in Brussels.

  Her remarks came after Iran announced on Tuesday that it had begun work to enrich uranium to 20 percent, which it says is for a medical research reactor in Tehran.

  Experts say that once Iran enriches uranium to 20 percent, it could proceed to the 93 percent needed to produce nuclear weapons since the technology is the same. Iran insists its atomic program is only for civilian use.

  “It goes in the wrong direction, that is not building confidence,” Tauscher said, adding that the move creates “significant doubts amongst their regional neighbors and the world community generally as to what their motives are.”

  “This is not the time where there ought to be that much confusion about what your motives are,” she said.

  Yesterday Iran dismissed as “not logical” a plan by the US that would allow Tehran to obtain medical isotopes in return for a halt to its enrichment program.

  “Shutting down the reactor or stopping the production of medicine is not the solution,” Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast said. “This proposal is not logical.”

  US State Department spokesman Philip Crowley had floated the idea after Tehran announced it had started the process of enriching uranium to 20 percent purity.

  In the wake of the declaration, Crowley said in Washington that the US would propose to the International Atomic Energy Agency an alternative means for Tehran to obtain the medical isotopes it needs for cancer patients.

  The world community was ready to work constructively to meet any “specific need” Iran has and would “facilitate Iran’s procurement of medical isotopes from third countries,” Crowley told reporters without elaborating.

  Mehmanparast yesterday quickly shot down the idea, saying world powers should instead cooperate and allow Iran to expand its nuclear enrichment program.

  “The solution is that the other side cooperates to increase [the number of] these reactors ... and meet the needs of patients,” he said.

  Mehmanparast for the second time in two days also dismissed threats by world powers of new sanctions.

  Washington and other world powers, he said, had “better adopt a realistic approach instead of economic and political pressures to deprive us of our basic rights.”

  US President Barack Obama said on Tuesday the world must be prepared to pressure Iran to change course, even if the “door is still open” to negotiations.

  “What we are going to be working on over the next several weeks is developing a significant regime of sanctions that will indicate to them how isolated they are from the international community as a whole,” Obama said.
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