RAMALALH: British Foreign Secretary David Miliband said that Iran is clearly feeling the effect of economic sanctions imposed by the international community over its nuclear program.
Miliband told the Israeli daily Jerusalem Post in an interview published yesterday that “sanctions are clearly having an impact on the Iranian economy.”
He added that “all nuclear proliferation is dangerous,” but such proliferation in the Middle East is “especially dangerous.”
Iran, he noted, was facing five UN resolutions demanding that it halt uranium enrichment, and was in conflict with the IAEA over its nuclear program. “All diplomatic means” were being pursued to bring home to the Iranians the seriousness of the issue, said Miliband, without elaborating as to what might ensue if diplomatic and economic pressure failed to deter Tehran. Israeli sources said that Miliband and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert discussed the urgent need to halt the Iranian nuclear program.
Also during this meeting, Miliband said he was concerned about continued Israeli settlement construction and asked for a clarification of government policy. Olmert said that Israel built only within settlement blocs that it was likely to maintain in a final-status agreement. As to the dispute that has flared between Israel and the UK over labeling products from West Bank Jewish settlements that are sold in Britain, Miliband said the UK was not reopening the issue, and that the agreement reached between the countries in 2004-5 was “right and good.” What was in discussion, he said, was the nature of its implementation. But in their talks, Olmert took issue with Britain over clearly labeling all produce originating in the West Bank settlements. The Israeli prime minister reminded Miliband that Israeli produce was exported to Britain as part of a trade agreement with the European Union, and said that Britain had an obligation to comply with that treaty and should not be seeking to amend it.
Miliband, who will be making the highest-level British visit to Syria for several years, dismissed as “nonsense” reports that he would be offering President Bashar Assad the prize of an Israeli withdrawal from the Golan Heights as part of a package of measures designed to persuade Syria to abandon its backing for Hamas and Hezbollah, halt its efforts to destabilize Lebanon and distance itself from Iran.
“I’m not going to negotiate on anyone’s behalf,” he said. He added, however, that he had been talking to Syria’s Foreign Minister Walid Muallem for 18 months about Damascus’s responsibilities in the region — in Lebanon, including Hezbollah; in Iraq, as regards its dispatch of fighters and arms; in relation to terrorism and other key issues.
