TEHRAN, March 5: President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Wednesday rejected any new talks with the European Union over Iran’s nuclear programme, saying Tehran would in future only negotiate with the UN atomic agency.
His comments came three days after the UN Security Council tightened sanctions against Tehran over its refusal to heed the world body’s calls to freeze uranium enrichment.
“Iran will not negotiate with anyone outside the (atomic) agency with regard to its nuclear issue…From now on, the nuclear issue of Iran will be only in the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and in the framework of mutual commitments and nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT),” he said, according to state news agency IRNA.
He specifically rejected the Security Council’s call for further talks with EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana, who has been holding talks on behalf of six world powers with Tehran on the standoff for almost two years.
“From Iran’s point of view, the recent Security Council resolution is utterly invalid and not important, since its decisions are not legal,” Mr Ahmadinejad said.
ECONOMY: Iran shrugged off on Wednesday the impact of new UN sanctions on Tehran, saying its firms had no problems in securing trade finance and investment in the state was rising.
“If we had any special difficulty in opening credit for merchants, the volume of investment in the country would not have increased compared with last year,” Economy Minister Davoud Danesh-Jafari was quoted as saying by the ISNA news agency.
However, economists say UN and US punitive measures imposed on Iran since late 2006 are making Western companies more wary of investing in the country even though its vast energy reserves make it a magnet for oil majors.
Analysts and European executives in Iran say it has become increasingly difficult for Iranian firms, and Western companies dealing with them, to open letters of credit for imports into the country.
But Mohsen Talaie, deputy foreign minister in charge of economic affairs, was quoted as saying by the official IRNA news agency: “The sanctions will not have any impact on the country’s economic development in view of the special mechanisms devised.”
Mr Danesh-Jafari acknowledged some international banks may want to cut back on dealings with Iran but said others were interested in expanding ties. “Banks throughout the world are concerned about their own interests ... and we see there are many banks interested in having relations with Iran,” the minister said.
DOSSIER: The Iranian nuclear dossier was the object of lively debate here on Wednesday.
On the third day of a meeting of the board of governors of the International Atomic Energy here, Iran was the last major topic on the agenda.
Speaking on behalf of Britain, France and Germany, British Ambassador Simon Smith complained that Tehran’s answers on a number of outstanding issues had been “less than satisfactory” and Iran’s record in complying with UN and IAEA resolutions was “abysmal”.
US Ambassador Gregory Schulte insisted that despite some progress on past issues, the Iranian file was far from being closed.
Norwegian envoy Ole Lundby said that most countries did not dispute Iran’s right to peaceful nuclear energy. But the onus was on Tehran to prove that there was no hidden military dimension to its atomic drive, he said.
Meanwhile, Cuban Ambassador Norma Goicchea Estenoz, who chairs the Non-Aligned Movement, including countries such as South Africa and Cuba, praised Iran’s “pro-active cooperation” in resolving the outstanding issues.—Agencies
