Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad warned that sanctions will not stop Iran from enriching uranium after a European negotiator conceded "endless hours" of talks had made little progress and suggested the dispute could wind up at the UN soon.
The talks had been seen as a last-ditch attempt to avoid a full-blown confrontation between Iran and the UN Security Council after Tehran ignored an Aug. 31 deadline to suspend enrichment -- a key step toward making nuclear weapons -- or face punishment.
The Iranian leader's comments on Wednesday -- and the view of senior UN diplomats who said that nearly two years of intermittent negotiations had failed -- suggested an emerging consensus that the time has finally come to consider Security Council sanctions.
Iran maintains its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes and does not violate international law. Its refusal to give up enrichment compounds the failure of more than three years of UN inspections to banish suspicions that Tehran might have a secret weapons program. The conflict picked up steam after last year's election of the hard-line Ahmadinejad.
Javier Solana, the European official who has been negotiating with the Iranians, told the European Parliament on Wednesday that the Iranians had made "no commitment to suspend." Dialogue with the Iranians "cannot last forever" and it was up to Tehran "to decide whether its time has come to end," he said.
Solana said his talks had found "common ground" on some issues "but we have not agreed in what is the key point, which is the question of suspension of activities before the start of the negotiations."
He suggested that if the talks ended, the standoff should be moved to the Security Council.
In a speech shortly afterward, Ahmadinejad warned that sanctions would not dissuade his country from pursuing nuclear technology, including the enrichment of uranium.
"You are mistaken if you assume that the Iranian nation will stop for even a moment from the path toward using nuclear energy, due to your nagging," he told the West, speaking to a crowd of supporters outside Iran's capital.
"For 27 years they haven't allowed us to use technologies that they possess," Ahmadinejad added. "This nation is powerful and won't give in to one iota of coercion."
In an apparent response to Solana, the Iranian president said his nation favored continued negotiations.
"We are for talks. We can talk with each other and remove ambiguities. We have logic. We want talks to continue," he said.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and foreign ministers from five other major powers were expected to meet, possibly today in London, to discuss the situation.
Diplomats said the Security Council could meet as early as Monday to start work on a resolution imposing the first of a series of sanctions meant to make Iran roll back its program.
Iran was initially referred to the Security Council in February by the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN nuclear watchdog, which said Tehran's suspicious activities represented breaches of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. The Vienna-based agency also said it could not be sure Iran was not trying to make weapons.
The US insisted that Tehran halt enrichment as a precondition for further talks on its nuclear program, but Iran ignored the Aug. 31 deadline set by the Security Council.
The US then agreed to let Solana hold more talks with the Iranians after Russia, China and France spoke out against a rush to sanctions.
At first, both Solana and Iran's top negotiator, Ali Larijani, had signaled progress in the talks.
On Tuesday, however, diplomats said Larijani told Solana that the Iranian leadership had rejected even a limited enrichment freeze.
One diplomat said Western council members -- the US, Britain and France -- favor an embargo on sales of nuclear or missile technology to Tehran as a first sanctions step. That would be followed by other sanctions, including travel bans on Iranian officials and the freezing of assets.
An endangered baby pygmy hippopotamus that shot to social media stardom in Thailand has become a lucrative source of income for her home zoo, quadrupling its ticket sales, the institution said Thursday. Moo Deng, whose name in Thai means “bouncy pork,” has drawn tens of thousands of visitors to Khao Kheow Open Zoo this month. The two-month-old pygmy hippo went viral on TikTok and Instagram for her cheeky antics, inspiring merchandise, memes and even craft tutorials on how to make crocheted or cake-based Moo Dengs at home. A zoo spokesperson said that ticket sales from the start of September to Wednesday reached almost
‘BARBAROUS ACTS’: The captain of the fishing vessel said that people in checkered clothes beat them with iron bars and that he fell unconscious for about an hour Ten Vietnamese fishers were violently robbed in the South China Sea, state media reported yesterday, with an official saying the attackers came from Chinese-flagged vessels. The men were reportedly beaten with iron bars and robbed of thousands of dollars of fish and equipment on Sunday off the Paracel Islands (Xisha Islands, 西沙群島), which Taiwan claims, as do Vietnam, China, Brunei, Malaysia and the Philippines. Vietnamese media did not identify the nationalities of the attackers, but Phung Ba Vuong, an official in central Quang Ngai province, told reporters: “They were Chinese, [the boats had] Chinese flags.” Four of the 10-man Vietnamese crew were rushed
Scientists yesterday announced a milestone in neurobiological research with the mapping of the entire brain of an adult fruit fly, a feat that might provide insight into the brains of other organisms and even people. The research detailed more than 50 million connections between more than 139,000 neurons — brain nerve cells — in the insect, a species whose scientific name is Drosophila melanogaster and is often used in neurobiological studies. The research sought to decipher how brains are wired and the signals underlying healthy brain functions. It could also pave the way for mapping the brains of other species. “You might
PROTESTS: A crowd near Congress waved placards that read: ‘How can we have freedom without education?’ and: ‘No peace for the government’ Argentine President Javier Milei has made good on threats to veto proposed increases to university funding, with the measure made official early yesterday after a day of major student-led protests. Thousands of people joined the demonstration on Wednesday in defense of the country’s public university system — the second large-scale protest in six months on the issue. The law, which would have guaranteed funding for universities, was criticized by Milei, a self-professed “anarcho-capitalist” who came to power vowing to take a figurative chainsaw to public spending to tame chronically high inflation and eliminate the deficit. A huge crowd packed a square outside Congress
RSS