CAIRO, 12 June 2006 — Iran yesterday gave its most negative assessment of proposals offered by six world powers that aim to persuade Tehran to give up sensitive atomic work and said the key issue of uranium enrichment needed clarification.
The proposals, which include both incentives and penalties, are based on a demand that Iran stops enriching uranium, a process that can make fuel for power plants, as Tehran insists it is doing, or material for bombs, as the West contends.
Tehran has repeatedly rejected calls to stop the enrichment.
“These proposals contain some positive points. At the same time there are problems and ambiguous points,” chief nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani said in Cairo.
In previous comments, he had not referred to “problems” but only to unspecified “ambiguities” that needed removing.
Before the proposal was delivered, Iranian officials had insisted the country would not give up enrichment, usually described as a national right, though some officials had hinted Iran might negotiate over plans for industrial-scale enrichment.
“This (offer) contains positive points, such as nuclear reactors for Iran,” Larijani said.
But the package lists possible penalties if Iran rejects it. These are said to include travel bans on Iranian individuals, freezing assets, imposing an embargo on arms sales to Iran and some Iranian exports, such as some hydrocarbons.
“Rights Not Negotiable”
Larijani, who heads Iran’s Supreme National Security Council that has been entrusted with handling nuclear talks, said no deadline had been set for Iran to accept the package.
“It was said that Iran was given a limited time period to agree... this is incorrect,” he said.
Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman told reporters in Tehran that Iran would not be rushed and dismissed accusations by some Western critics that Iran was stalling.
“We have not been given a deadline... but that does not mean we are seeking to buy time,” Hamid Reza Asefi told a weekly news conference in Tehran.
He also reflected the increasingly negative tone toward the proposals by saying some points in the package “should not exist” and said Tehran would respond with its own proposals.
When he was asked whether Iran would be willing to suspend enrichment during negotiations, as demanded, Asefi said: “We will not abandon our rights under any condition. Our rights are not negotiable. The initiative is in our hands.”
