Source: AFP, 06-03-2008
TEHRAN: President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad rejected on Wednesday any new talks with the European Union over Iran's nuclear program, saying Tehran would in future negotiate only with the UN atomic agency. His comments came three days after the Security Council tightened sanctions against Tehran over its refusal to heed the world body's calls to freeze uranium enrichment, a potential weapons-making process.
After issuing the resolution, world powers urged EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana to resume talks with Iran's nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili to break the deadlock in the four-year nuclear standoff with the West.
But Ahmadinejad retorted after a Cabinet meeting: "Iran will not negotiate with anyone outside the [atomic] agency with regard to its nuclear issue."
"From now on, Iran's nuclear issue will be only in the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and in the framework of mutual commitments and nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty," he added, according to state news agency IRNA.
He specifically rejected the Security Council call for further talks with Solana, who has been holding talks with Tehran on behalf of six world powers for almost two years.
"Regarding the fact that it has been said in the resolution that Solana is in charge of negotiations with Iran, I have to stress again we will not have any nuclear negotiation with any individual and organization outside the framework of the agency," said Ahmadinejad, according to the Fars news agency.
Ahmadinejad, in his first reaction to the third set of Security Council sanctions against Tehran, described the measures as "invalid" and vowed that Iran would press on with its nuclear drive.
"We have had harder resolutions in the past but this last resolution is very funny," added Commerce Minister Massoud Mir Kazemi. "These measures are just aimed at making noise."
Meanwhile, Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said in Geneva that negotiations were "not appropriate," adding that those who thought the latest sanctions would hurt Iran "are definitely wrong." Mottaki, who was attending a UN conference, told the meeting on Tuesday that Iran wanted to ban all nuclear weapons through an international treaty. "The time has come to ban and eliminate all nuclear weapons," he said.
The Security Council has repeatedly called on Iran to freeze uranium enrichment, which the West fears could be used to make nuclear weapons, but which Iran insists is only needed to make atomic fuel for power stations.
Solana held several meetings with former top nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani and three with the current incumbent Jalili. However, the two sides never made any breakthroughs.
The talks appeared to make even less progress after Jalili's appointment, with Solana bluntly saying after a session in London last year that he was "disappointed." Fourteen of the Security Council's 15 members voted Monday in favor of Resolution 1803 put forward by Britain and France, who delayed the vote in a bid to win unanimity to send a strong signal to Tehran.
The resolution gives Iran three months to comply with UN demands to suspend enrichment, something Tehran has already made abundantly clear it has no intention of doing.
Iran had been hoping its ongoing cooperation with the IAEA to answer questions about past areas of ambiguity in its atomic program would mean the nuclear case would be taken away from the Security Council.
Officials have also hailed the IAEA's latest report as a success for Tehran that "closed" its nuclear case, even though the body was unable to confirm the atomic drive was peaceful.
Western nations had pushed Tuesday for an additional resolution against Tehran from the IAEA's board of governors. But in a sign of continued international divisions, the text was dropped amid objections from Russia, China and developing countries that argued it was superfluous after the Security Council measures. -