Europe's three main states were to give Iran a last chance yesterday to reassure the world it is not secretly developing atomic weapons, offering valuable nuclear technology as a carrot and possible UN sanctions as the stick.
Britain, France and Germany are ready to promise Iran nuclear technology, including supplying a light-water nuclear reactor, if Tehran takes steps to show it is not secretly trying to make atomic weapons, according to a confidential document obtained by reporters and confirmed in Vienna by diplomats.
Political directors from the foreign ministries of the three European states are to meet in Vienna with Iranian foreign ministry international political affairs director Amir Hossein Zamani-Nia, officials said in Tehran.
The meeting, which diplomats said was to be held at a secret location to avoid press coverage, is to give Iran a last-chance to come clean and to agree to suspend all activities related to uranium enrichment before the UN nuclear watchdog the International Atomic Energy Agency decides on Nov. 25 in Vienna whether Iran is cooperating with it or not.
The US wants the IAEA, which since February last year has been investigating Iran on US charges that the Islamic Republic has a covert nuclear weapons program, to send Iran to the UN Security Council, which could impose punishing sanctions.
But the European trio have opposed this, favoring instead a policy of "constructive engagement" to get Tehran to cooperate. They had reached an agreement with Iran in October last year to suspend uranium enrichment but this did not include support activities such as building centrifuges and making the feed gas for the enrichment process.
Uranium enrichment can be used to make fuel for civilian reactors but also the explosive core of nuclear weapons.
The Europeans are now ready to promise Iran a whole range of measures, including access to nuclear fuel for its civilian reactors and recognizing Iran's right to a peaceful nuclear power program, according to a seven-page confidential paper the European trio presented to the G8 group of industrialized nations last week in Washington.
"We would support the acquisition by Iran of a light water research reactor," the paper said, adding that the EU would "be ready to resume negotiations on an EU/Iran trade and cooperation agreement" and back Russia's building of a nuclear reactor for Iran in Bushehr.
The US said Wednesday it would be "concerned" by Iran's acquisition of any new nuclear technology, signalling opposition to the European offer.
"We have long had concerns about Iran's acquisition of nuclear capability, of nuclear technology, because for many years we have seen a confirmed pattern of noncompliance with safeguards," spokesman Richard Boucher told reporters.
A Vienna-based western diplomat said the US is watching the European initiative to see how Iran responds and would afterward reconvene the G8 nations, which include the UK, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the US, for further discussion.
If Iran does not agree and does not comply with its obligations, the European trio would join the US in calling for the Islamic Republic to be taken to the Security Council, the paper said.
Iran refused Wednesday to give up on producing enriched uranium.
"We demand respect for our rights to have nuclear technology for civilian use and that no-one tries to deprive us of this," President Mohammad Khatami said after a cabinet meeting.
But he added: "We are ready to cooperate and believe that dialogue and negotiation are the only ways to reach an understanding."
On another front which has raised concern abroad, Iran on Wednesday conducted a new test of its upgraded Shahab-3 ballistic missile, which it says has a range of 2,000km, the defense minister said.
AFGHAN CHILD: A court battle is ongoing over if the toddler can stay with Joshua Mast and his wife, who wanted ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’ for her Major Joshua Mast, a US Marine whose adoption of an Afghan war orphan has spurred a years-long legal battle, is to remain on active duty after a three-member panel of Marines on Tuesday found that while he acted in a way unbecoming of an officer to bring home the baby girl, it did not warrant his separation from the military. Lawyers for the Marine Corps argued that Mast abused his position, disregarded orders of his superiors, mishandled classified information and improperly used a government computer in his fight over the child who was found orphaned on the battlefield in rural Afghanistan
STICKING TO DEFENSE: Despite the screening of videos in which they appeared, one of the defendants said they had no memory of the event A court trying a Frenchman charged with drugging his wife and enlisting dozens of strangers to rape her screened videos of the abuse to the public on Friday, to challenge several codefendants who denied knowing she was unconscious during their actions. The judge in the southern city of Avignon had nine videos and several photographs of the abuse of Gisele Pelicot shown in the courtroom and an adjoining public chamber, involving seven of the 50 men accused alongside her husband. Present in the courtroom herself, Gisele Pelicot looked at her telephone during the hour and a half of screenings, while her ex-husband
NEW STORM: investigators dubbed the attacks on US telecoms ‘Salt Typhoon,’ after authorities earlier this year disrupted China’s ‘Flax Typhoon’ hacking group Chinese hackers accessed the networks of US broadband providers and obtained information from systems that the federal government uses for court-authorized wiretapping, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported on Saturday. The networks of Verizon Communications, AT&T and Lumen Technologies, along with other telecoms, were breached by the recently discovered intrusion, the newspaper said, citing people familiar with the matter. The hackers might have held access for months to network infrastructure used by the companies to cooperate with court-authorized US requests for communications data, the report said. The hackers had also accessed other tranches of Internet traffic, it said. The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs
EYEING THE US ELECTION: Analysts say that Pyongyang would likely leverage its enlarged nuclear arsenal for concessions after a new US administration is inaugurated North Korean leader Kim Jong-un warned again that he could use nuclear weapons in potential conflicts with South Korea and the US, as he accused them of provoking North Korea and raising animosities on the Korean Peninsula, state media reported yesterday. Kim has issued threats to use nuclear weapons pre-emptively numerous times, but his latest warning came as experts said that North Korea could ramp up hostilities ahead of next month’s US presidential election. In a Monday speech at a university named after him, the Kim Jong-un National Defense University, he said that North Korea “will without hesitation use all its attack
RSS