VIENNA, 13 May 2006 — The United States must talk directly to Iran about its disputed nuclear program as Tehran will not negotiate seriously if Washington is not involved, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said yesterday.
“As long as the Iranians have a sense that they are negotiating with the Europeans ad referendum (needing referral for a final decision), and what they discuss with them will have to be checked with the Americans, and then come back again to them, I am not sure they will put everything on the table,” Annan told reporters in Vienna, on the sidelines of an EU-Latin American summit.
European Union efforts since 2003 to win guarantees that Iran is not making nuclear weapons have foundered, with Iran pushing ahead since April on enriching uranium for what can be nuclear reactor fuel but also atom bomb material.
The EU wants to offer trade, security and technological benefits in order to get Iran to cooperate but analysts said the offer needs to involve the United States, especially for security issues, if it is to be taken seriously.
The United States has refused to get involved directly in talks with Iran but backs the EU diplomacy. Washington stood firm Thursday in its rejection of direct talks on Iran’s controversial nuclear program but said Tehran had channels of communication if it wanted to use them. With international efforts to persuade or compel the Iranians to give up their uranium enrichment apparently stalled, calls have echoed in Europe and in the United States for more direct US involvement.
Speculation about direct talks between the two rivals heightened this week after Iran’s leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad ended a 26-year break in official contacts with a letter to US President George W. Bush. But US State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said: “The problems that Iran has right now are with the rest of the world, not just between the United States and Iran.”
Washington’s European allies have spearheaded negotiations with the Iranians and are currently preparing a new package of incentives to try to entice Tehran away from uranium enrichment. “I have asked all sides to lower their rhetoric and intensify diplomatic efforts to find a solution,” Annan said.
A leading religious leader yesterday praised Ahmadinejad for sending a letter to Bush that was harshly critical of Washington’s policies. “No one in the world dares to write such a letter to the US president which has no token of us being humiliated,” Ahmad Jannati, head of the Guardian Council, an unelected watchdog made up of Islamic clerics, said.
