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PARIS, Sept 2: UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has said patience will prove more effective than sanctions in persuading Iran to drop its uranium enrichment programme. “I do not believe sanctions are the solution to everything. There are times when a little patience is more effective. I think that is a quality we should exercise more often,” Mr Annan said in an interview with the French newspaper Le Monde to be published on Sunday.
The United States is leading a drive for United Nations sanctions on Tehran after it refused to heed a Security Council deadline on Thursday to halt sensitive nuclear operations.
European countries have emphasised that the door remains open to negotiations with Iran, after the Security Council’s permanent members — Britain, China, France, Russia and the US — plus Germany, offered a package of incentives in return for a nuclear freeze.
But President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Saturday vowed that Iran would defend the aims of its nuclear programme ‘with firmness’ during any negotiations on the issue.
The UN chief called on Iran to prove it planned to use nuclear power for peaceful means ‘by giving the UN inspectors access to all its facilities’.
“Such a move could allow us to move forward,” said Mr Annan, who arrived in Tehran on Saturday for talks with Iran’s leaders on the issue.
Mr Annan also said the Iranian president had promised to ‘cooperate’ in the implementation of UN resolution 1701, which calls for the disarmament of the Hezbollah.
Mr Ahmadinejad ‘told me he did not not like certain elements (of the resolution)’, but had ‘told me he would cooperate’ after the Lebanese government, including Hezbollah, agreed to the terms, said Mr Annan.
The UN secretary general said he hoped the Iranians would ‘use their influence to work with the international community to implement resolution 1701’.
And he called on Iran to use its influence to secure the release of the two Israeli soldiers whose kidnap sparked the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah.
MORE TIME: The European Union gave Iran extra time on Saturday to show it was serious about negotiating over its contested nuclear activities but warned the Western bloc expected a clear response.
With EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana set to meet Iran’s top nuclear negotiator Ari Larijani early next week, the bloc’s foreign ministers said they wanted to know shortly whether Tehran was willing to talk.
“The deadline is tight. His mandate is tight. We need action. We need a response from Iran,” Britain’s minister for European affairs, Geoff Hoon, told reporters after the EU talks in southern Finland.
Iran ignored a UN Security Council deadline on Thursday to suspend uranium enrichment.
The United States has begun working toward sanctions, but since Iran offered new talks on its nuclear programme, Russia and China appear to have softened their stance in Tehran’s favour.
Mr Solana’s talks with Mr Larijani are meant to ‘clarify’ sections of a 21-page Iranian response to an incentives deal, which also includes an offer to relaunch talks. Diplomats have suggested the text is, at best, unclear.—AFP
