VIENNA/TEHRAN, 21 December 2005 — Iran and the European Union are to meet today to try to break a deadlock over Tehran’s insistence on its right to make nuclear fuel, which the West fears could be used to make atom bombs. European and Western diplomats fear the meeting in Vienna will be all but futile due to Iran’s increasingly hard line over its nuclear program.
But an EU diplomat told AFP that the Europeans were ready to be “realistic and distinguish between what is desirable and what is possible,” namely by accepting some fuel cycle work while drawing the line at enrichment — a process that can be extended to make the explosive core of a nuclear bomb.
Talks between Iran and the EU negotiating trio Britain, Germany and France broke off in August when Iran resumed uranium conversion, the first step in enrichment. Iran now says it will not back away from its right under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to carry out enrichment, limiting chances for a compromise.
Meanwhile, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has raised concerns through a series of hard-line statements against Israel, notably his remark in October that the Jewish state should be wiped off the map. US President George W. Bush said Monday that Ahmadinejad’s incendiary statements showed why it was “universally” accepted that Tehran should not have nuclear weapons. “I fear that we’ll just be going through the motions when we meet with the Iranians,” said a diplomat from one of the EU-3 states.
Today’s talks will aim to find a way to restart formal negotiations on winning guarantees that Iran will not seek nuclear weapons. A total breakdown in today’s meeting would likely spark a push by the Europeans and the United States to send the issue to the UN Security Council — which could impose sanctions.
Meanwhile, Ahmadinejad’s ban on Western music fell on deaf ears yesterday, as shop owners and music enthusiasts in the Iranian capital continued selling, buying and listening to everything from Hip Hop to country rock. A shop’s owner said he didn’t expect the president’s ban to be implemented. “Clerics and officials speak about imposing restrictions every other day. I don’t think it’s going to be enforced,” said Reza Sadeghi as he counted some bills he received from the sale of an Eric Clapton tape.
The official IRAN Persian daily reported Monday that Ahmadinejad, as head of the Supreme Cultural Revolutionary Council, ordered the enactment of an October ruling by the council to ban all Western music, including classical music, on state broadcast outlets. The order was an eerie reminder of the 1979 revolution when popular music was outlawed as “un-Islamic” under Ayatollah Khomeini. In the revolution’s early years, police stopped cars in search of Western music tapes, destroying any tapes they found and sometimes arresting those they caught listening to them.
