TEHRAN, 22 November 2007 — Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad yesterday ruled out giving “the slightest concession” in Iran’s atomic standoff with the West, amid doubts over whether new talks with the European Union would go ahead. Ahmadinejad’s remarks were the latest sign his government has no intention of suspending uranium enrichment, the key sticking point between Iran and world powers in the nuclear crisis.
“They (the enemies) must know that Iran will not give the slightest concession ... to any power,” Ahmadinejad said in a speech broadcast live by state television. “If they manage to take even a small concession from us, they will later seek other concessions by making threats,” he said during a trip to the northern province of Ardebil.
Iranian officials said his close ally and new top nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili is due to meet EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana next week in their latest attempt to break the deadlock. Ahmadinejad last month replaced former nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani with Jalili, a move that was interpreted as aiming to increase Ahmadinejad’s control in the nuclear talks.
“The meeting will take place in the next week but the venue and the exact date has not been determined,” said an official source at Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, which is headed by Jalili.
But Solana doubted whether the meeting could take place in the next two weeks. “I have been in contact with them (the Iranians). I don’t see this week because they have not offered any date. I will be at their disposal this week but it has not been possible,” he told reporters in Brussels.
“Next week will be very difficult,” he said. Solana is due to take part in a key Middle East peace conference in the United States on Tuesday. A meeting scheduled for yesterday between Jalili’s deputy Javad Vaeedi and a top Solana aide Robert Cooper, to prepare the crucial encounter between their bosses, was also postponed to a later date, officials said.
Solana must report to the UN Security Council by the end of November on Tehran’s willingness to comply with the council’s demand to freeze uranium enrichment, a potential bomb-making process.
He has tried to persuade Tehran to resume talks on suspending uranium enrichment in exchange for a package of political and economic incentives but Tehran has refused to offer concessions.
Iran has already had two sets of UN sanctions imposed on it over the issue. “We believe that nuclear energy is our nation’s right and today this energy is at our disposal,” Ahmadinejad said. “No one can take it from us.”
Washington accuses Tehran of using its program as cover for a drive to develop an atomic bomb. Iran strongly denies that charge, saying it wants only to generate electricity.
Tehran forged an August agreement with the UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, to examine outstanding issues in its atomic activities, including uranium-enriching centrifuges. The IAEA report of Nov. 15 said Iran had taken important steps in revealing the extent of its nuclear drive but was still defying UN demands that it suspend uranium enrichment. The IAEA said it would focus on the contamination issue in the next few weeks as well as studies and activities that the West fears could have military applications.
Meanwhile, Iran hanged a convicted drug trafficker in a square in the clerical capital Qom yesterday, the latest in a growing number of executions that officials say are aimed at improving public security. The man, identified by his first name of Gholam Reza, was sent to the gallows for trafficking 90 kilograms of narcotics, state media reported.
The head of the Qom judiciary, Hojatoleslam Mahmoud Talebi was quoted as saying: “After we intensified the confrontation with the drug dealers we have witnessed a decrease in the distribution of narcotics in Qom.” The hanging brings the total number of executions in Iran this year to 267, according to an AFP count compiled from press reports. Many are hanged in public.
