TEHRAN, 14 March 2005 — Washington is “hallucinating” if it thinks Iran will scrap its nuclear fuel production plans in return for economic incentives, a senior Iranian official was quoted as saying yesterday. The United States offered the encouragements in support of the European Union which is negotiating with Tehran to try to persuade it to give up sensitive nuclear activities.
“US officials are either unaware of the substance of the talks or (they are) hallucinating,” Sirus Naseri, a senior member of Iran’s nuclear negotiating team, told the official IRNA news agency. Iran says it needs atomic technology to generate electricity and will never use it to make bombs, as the United States fears.
Washington gave practical backing for the EU’s diplomatic approach on Friday, offering to allow Iran to begin talks on joining the World Trade Organization and consider letting it buy civilian airline parts if it ceased all activities that could produce fuel for nuclear power plants or atomic weapons.
Hossein Mousavian, a senior Iranian national security council official, said these were not real concessions. He told the BBC the United States should unblock frozen Iranian assets, lift sanctions and stop “hostile measures”. Iran says $8 billion of its assets were seized by the United States shortly after the 1979 revolution.
Mousavian said Iran would embrace “with open arms” confidence-building measures and objective guarantees to prove that it was not seeking weapons of mass destruction. Washington and the EU have warned Iran it faces referral to the UN Security Council, which could impose economic sanctions, if it fails to allay fears it wants the bomb.
Naseri said it was not clear if greater US involvement in the negotiations was “helpful or an obstacle to progress”. He said the EU, which has persuaded Iran to suspend potentially weapons-related activities like uranium enrichment while the two sides try to reach a solution, was close to accepting that Iran would not give up enrichment.
Instead, Tehran has offered to give “objective guarantees” that it will not divert nuclear fuel to military uses. “It seems the Europeans are ready to adopt a logical position,” Naseri said. Iran has refused to disclose its guarantees publicly but diplomats and analysts say it is offering to allow intrusive inspections that ensure it only enriches uranium to a low grade which would be unsuitable for weapons.
Meanwhile, Iran yesterday put on display three British naval boats it captured last year, shrugging off protests by London which has demanded their return, IRNA reported. The boats, seized along with their crews by Iranian Revolutionary Guards last June in the Shatt Al-Arab waterway which divides southwestern Iran from Iraq, were included in an exhibition of memorabilia from Iran’s 1980-1988 war with Iraq.
