UN Security Council member Turkey insisted yesterday that diplomacy is the best way to resolve Iran’s nuclear crisis and offered to help break a deadlock over an atomic fuel deal for Tehran.
Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, on a visit to Tehran, reiterated that Ankara, which has resisted a US push for a fourth round of sanctions against Iran, favored negotiations to resolve the impasse.
World powers led by the US believe Iran’s nuclear program is masking a drive for atomic weapons. Tehran says the program is solely aimed at generating electricity to fuel its growing economy.
“The solution for Iran’s nuclear program is through negotiations and diplomatic process,” Davutoglu said at a media conference in Tehran in remarks translated through an interpreter.
Turkey, one of the 15 UN Security Council members and a regional ally of Iran, “is ready to act as an intermediary in the issue of uranium exchange as a third country and hopes to have a fruitful role in this,” Davutoglu said. “We will continue to try our best to see what we can do for this nuclear fuel swap.”
Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki, who jointly addressed the press conference with Davutoglu, said Iran has been regularly consulting Turkey over its nuclear program, but did not explicitly react to Ankara’s latest offer.
“Turkey will do its part if Iranians deem fit,” Davutoglu said in response.
Western powers are particularly infuriated with Iran because it defiantly began work on high-grade uranium enrichment after a deadlock over a UN-drafted deal to supply Tehran with the material intended to power a research reactor.
The deal from last October envisaged Iran sending its low-enriched uranium to Russia and France for conversion into high-grade 20 percent enriched uranium, to be returned later to Tehran as fuel for the medical research reactor.
However, the deal stalled when Iran insisted that the exchange of the two materials happen simultaneously inside the country, a condition rejected by world powers.
Mottaki at the weekend said Tehran planned to talk to all the 15 members of the UN Security Council, including Washington, over the proposed fuel swap.
On Monday he went further and said he believed a deal was still possible.
“If the other side has serious political will for the fuel exchange formula, this can be a multi-lateral trust building opportunity, especially for the Islamic republic to trust the other side,” he said.
Indonesia was to sign an agreement to repatriate two British nationals, including a grandmother languishing on death row for drug-related crimes, an Indonesian government source said yesterday. “The practical arrangement will be signed today. The transfer will be done immediately after the technical side of the transfer is agreed,” the source said, identifying Lindsay Sandiford and 35-year-old Shahab Shahabadi as the people being transferred. Sandiford, a grandmother, was sentenced to death on the island of Bali in 2013 after she was convicted of trafficking drugs. Customs officers found cocaine worth an estimated US$2.14 million hidden in a false bottom in Sandiford’s suitcase when
CAUSE UNKNOWN: Weather and runway conditions were suitable for flight operations at the time of the accident, and no distress signal was sent, authorities said A cargo aircraft skidded off the runway into the sea at Hong Kong International Airport early yesterday, killing two ground crew in a patrol car, in one of the worst accidents in the airport’s 27-year history. The incident occurred at about 3:50am, when the plane is suspected to have lost control upon landing, veering off the runway and crashing through a fence, the Airport Authority Hong Kong said. The jet hit a security patrol car on the perimeter road outside the runway zone, which then fell into the water, it said in a statement. The four crew members on the plane, which
Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and its junior partner yesterday signed a coalition deal, paving the way for Sanae Takaichi to become the nation’s first female prime minister. The 11th-hour agreement with the Japan Innovation Party (JIP) came just a day before the lower house was due to vote on Takaichi’s appointment as the fifth prime minister in as many years. If she wins, she will take office the same day. “I’m very much looking forward to working with you on efforts to make Japan’s economy stronger, and to reshape Japan as a country that can be responsible for future generations,”
SEVEN-MINUTE HEIST: The masked thieves stole nine pieces of 19th-century jewelry, including a crown, which they dropped and damaged as they made their escape The hunt was on yesterday for the band of thieves who stole eight priceless royal pieces of jewelry from the Louvre Museum in the heart of Paris in broad daylight. Officials said a team of 60 investigators was working on the theory that the raid was planned and executed by an organized crime group. The heist reignited a row over a lack of security in France’s museums, with French Minister of Justice yesterday admitting to security flaws in protecting the Louvre. “What is certain is that we have failed, since people were able to park a furniture hoist in the middle of
RSS