TEHRAN, 23 March 2005 — Iran will not renounce uranium enrichment, a top nuclear official reaffirmed yesterday a day ahead of key talks, warning European countries against wasting time in the negotiations. “Iran has a legitimate right to a nuclear fuel cycle and will not give it up for any incentives,” the spokesman for Iran’s nuclear negotiating team, Hossein Mousavian, said on state radio.
“If there is progress in the negotiations we will continue (the talks) for three months, but if there is no progress and we notice the other side is wasting time, Iran will revise its position,” he added. Iran and officials from Britain, France and Germany are due to start a new round of negotiations in Paris, where a steering committee has to evaluate work done since December and decide how talks can go on.
“The steering committee must examine work done in different committees tomorrow before noon and the conclusions will be taken to their respective capitals for making a decision,” Mousavian said. Since December, the European Union has been trying in talks to get Iran to abandon crucial nuclear fuel cycle activities in return for a package of trade, technology and security rewards.
Iran flatly rejects the Europeans’ demand that it abandon uranium enrichment, which makes fuel for civilian nuclear reactors but which can also be used to manufacture the explosive core of atom bombs.
Iran says it has the right to the nuclear fuel cycle, as laid down in the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Meanwhile, Mohammad Saeidi, vice president of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, echoed Mousavian’s remarks, saying that Iran was committed to enriching uranium. “Iran has to put into place a system for mining and processing uranium ores and also for its conversion and enrichment,” he said at a conference on nuclear energy in Paris.
“The people and government of Iran are determined to open their way through the tortuous path of peaceful use of nuclear technology despite all imposed restrictions and difficulties,” Saeidi said, referring to US sanctions against the Islamic republic.
Saeidi said that Iran, one of the world’s major oil producers, still needed nuclear energy “to reverse the trend of unrestrained use of fossil resources.”
He restated Iran’s goal to eventually produce 7,000 megawatts of nuclear electricity, including the 1000-megawatt Bushehr power plant, a light-water reactor, which is already being built.
The United States charges that Iran is using its civilian nuclear energy program as a cover for secretly developing nuclear weapons. The EU has since December been meeting with Iran to get it to abandon uranium enrichment in return for trade, technology and security rewards. The two sides are to meet in Paris today in order to review progress so far in the talks.
Saeidi said that Iran, one of the world’s major oil producers, still needed nuclear energy “to reverse the trend of unrestrained use of fossil resources.”
“In the long term, fossil fuel cannot be considered as a sustainable source of energy,” Saeidi said, adding that this “made Iran’s reliance on only fossil fuel’s energy unreasonable and unaffordable and ... also made using new technologies such as the nuclear technology more competitive.”
