Iran offers talks to defuse standoff: IAEA holds crisis meeting
VIENNA, Aug 9: The UN nuclear watchdog held a crisis meeting on Tuesday to try to stop Iran pursuing a nuclear programme after Tehran resumed work at a uranium plant, stoking Western fears it was bent on developing atomic weapons. In Crawford, Texas, US President George Bush warned Iran that it might face UN sanctions over its nuclear activities, while welcoming reports Tehran is ready to resume talks to defuse the standoff.
Mr Bush thanked Britain, France and Germany for leading those diplomatic efforts and said: “We will work with them in terms of what consequences there may be, and certainly the United Nations is a potential consequence.”
“Just as I was walking in here, I received word that the new Iranian president said he was willing to get back to the table,” said Mr Bush. “If he did say that, I think that’s a positive sign.”
As the governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) met in Vienna, Iran’s President Mahmood Ahmadinejad said he had new ideas to resolve the nuclear standoff with the West and was ready to continue nuclear talks with the EU.
“I have new initiatives and proposals which I will present after my government takes office,” he said in a telephone conversation with UN Secretary General Kofi Annan.
He said Iran had done nothing unlawful by resuming uranium conversion at a nuclear facility near Isfahan on Monday.
Iran’s chief delegate at the IAEA meeting, Sirus Naseri, was more specific, telling reporters after the IAEA session adjourned that Iran wanted to continue talks with France, Britain and Germany but only on terms satisfactory to Tehran.
“We no longer accept being left out in the cold to wait for the Europeans to come up with a plausible basis for a solution,” he said, adding an Iranian proposal to settle the standoff by increasing IAEA inspections was ‘still on the table’.
“We can negotiate with the Europeans on the basis of that proposal,” he said, adding Iran would continue to resume some of the nuclear activities it had suspended under a Nov 2004 agreement with the EU.
Mr Ahmadinejad told Mr Annan an EU offer of incentives if Tehran scrapped its uranium enrichment programme was ‘an insult to the Iranian nation’. Tehran rejected the offer on Monday.
“They have talked to us ... as if the Iranian nation was suffering from backwardness and the time was 100 years ago and our country was their colony,” he said.
FROZEN ACTIVITIES: Another senior Iranian delegate to the Vienna meeting said UN seals were to be removed at Isfahan that could allow it to take the work a step further.
Mohammad Saeedi, deputy head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, said IAEA inspectors surveying developments at the plant would unseal a mothballed section by Wednesday.
“The agency has promised us it will remove the seals by noon on Wednesday because the installation of cameras has been completed,” he said.
Restarting the work, Tehran defied EU warnings it could now be referred to the UN Security Council for possible sanctions for having hidden its nuclear work for years — though the IAEA looked unlikely to take such a step at the Vienna meeting.
RUSSIA’S PLEA TO IRAN: Iran’s nuclear ally Russia, which is building a nuclear power plant at Bushehr in Iran, called on Tehran to immediately resume the suspension.
“It would be a wise decision to immediately stop the resumed work on uranium conversion and continue close cooperation with the IAEA to remove all remaining questions relating to the Iranian nuclear programme,” the foreign ministry said.—Reuters/AFP
