VIENNA, 16 June 2006 — Western powers nudged Iran yesterday to take up a new offer of incentives to halt its disputed nuclear fuel program, soft-pedaling previous threats of possible sanctions brushed aside by Tehran.
Responding to US and European appeals at a UN nuclear watchdog meeting, a senior Iranian diplomat said the package was under serious consideration. But in Tehran, Iran’s supreme leader said it would not buckle to Western pressure.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, alluding to Iran’s drive to master uranium enrichment technology, said “the continuation of this scientific move is among (our) prominent and main objectives.”
The five UN Security Council permanent members plus Germany offered Iran a package of sweeteners on June 6 to stop purifying uranium, which Tehran says would generate electricity but which the West sees as a disguised atomic bomb project.
The International Atomic Energy Agency’s 35-nation governing board debated two reports by IAEA chief Mohamed El-Baradei citing Iran’s continued obstruction of IAEA probes into its nuclear intentions and its refusal to freeze enrichment activity.
“We hope that Iran’s leaders will think about what is best for the economic prosperity and long-term security of the Iranian people,” the US ambassador to the IAEA, Gregory Schulte, told the Vienna-based board.
He said Iran could choose between two paths, one offering peaceful nuclear technology and another “bringing to bear the weight of the Security Council.” But he did not mention sanctions options often invoked before the new offer. China and Russia, big trade partners of Iran, oppose sanctions and could veto them in the council. Their stance has steeled Iranian defiance of Western pressure.
White House spokesman Tony Snow told reporters Iran seemed ready to negotiate and still had time to digest the offer, but reiterated it must halt enrichment for talks to start.
“The precondition is clear, everybody’s agreed on it. So they have to take that first necessary step,” Snow said.
Western diplomats said before yesterday’s debate that they would eschew tough language to coax Iran to accept the offer.
The six world powers have given Iran until a Group of 8 industrialized nations summit in mid-July to reply. Iranian Ambassador Ali Asghar Soltanieh told the IAEA meeting Tehran would provide an answer “in due course” and said Iran was ready for talks without preconditions to remove ambiguities about the intent of its nuclear activities.
“We are determined to keep the door of negotiations and dialogue open,” he told reporters. But he said any possible recourse to punishment if Iran refused the offer would not work.
“The ‘carrot and stick’ policy has always been counterproductive,” he said, condemning the IAEA’s referral of Tehran in February to the council over its history of hiding atomic research and stonewalling investigations.
