TEHRAN: Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Thursday urged Washington to unblock Iranian assets, as his US counterpart Barack Obama warned of “consequences” after Tehran’s dismissal of a UN-brokered nuclear fuel deal.
“If our nation sees they have changed their behavior, dropped their arrogant attitude ... and return Iranian nation’s rights and assets, the nation will accept that,” Ahmadinejad said in a televised speech. “But if they are again after deception and plotting in the region, our nation’s response will be the same as it gave to these men’s predecessors,” he said in an apparent warning to the United States.
The United States froze Iranian government assets in 1979 when its embassy in Tehran was stormed and its staff held hostage, which led to the scrapping of diplomatic relations in 1980.
World powers could have a package of measures against Iran “within weeks,” Obama said on Thursday. “Iran has taken weeks now and has not shown its willingness to say yes to this proposal ... and so as a consequence we have begun discussions with our international partners about the importance of having consequences,” Obama said at a joint news conference with South Korean President Lee Myung-bak in Seoul.
He said Iran would not be given an unlimited amount of time, likening the Iranian nuclear issue to years of stop-and-start negotiations with North Korea about its nuclear ambitions.
“We weren’t going to duplicate what has happened with North Korea, in which talks just continue forever without any actual resolution to the issue,” said Obama.
Representatives from major world powers will meet in Brussels on Friday (today) to discuss developments with Iran’s nuclear program, EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana’s office said.
“I can confirm that tomorrow in Brussels there will be a meeting of the three plus three at the level of political directors, hosted by the European Union,” Solana’s spokeswoman said.
Permanent UN Security Council members Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States, plus Germany — the so-called three plus three group — are leading efforts to persuade Iran to curb its nuclear ambitions. “The objective of the meeting is to review the latest developments on the Iran nuclear issue,” the spokeswoman, Cristina Gallach said.
Meanwhile, UN inspectors revisited Iran’s second uranium enrichment facility on Thursday, diplomats said, after voicing concern that Tehran’s belated disclosure of the nuclear site meant more may be hidden away.
The inspectors aimed to make further checks of the Fordow site’s layout and wanted more Iranian explanations to pinpoint the project’s chronology and original purpose, as well as access to its director and designers.
Iran revealed the site to the International Atomic Energy Agency in September, two years after it said construction began.
The IAEA said Iran was legally bound to own up about the plant as soon as plans were drafted. Iran disputes this.
An IAEA report on Monday said the inspectors’ first visit to the site last month did not yield all the information they needed to verify its purpose from the beginning was peaceful - that is, churning out low-enriched uranium for electricity generation, rather than high-enriched material for atomic bombs.
