Middle East News
Iran working on plan to settle nuclear dispute (Roundup)
Jul 20, 2008, 13:10 GMT
Tehran - Iran on Sunday said it is serious about settling its nuclear dispute with the West and was working on a 'road map' to resolve the issue, the ISNA news agency reported.
'Iran is serious about pursuing constant negotiations to settle the dispute. The two sides' common points could be used as a road map and for future negotiations,' ISNA quoted Iran's chief nuclear negotiator Saeid Jalili as saying.
Jalili met Saturday in Geneva with European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana and representatives of the five UN veto powers plus Germany in a bid to find a way to settle the dispute.
Although there was no breakthrough and Tehran again failed to say it would meet the major powers' demand to suspend uranium enrichment, the two sides have agreed to meet again in two weeks.
For the first time in almost three decades, the United States, represented by Undersecretary of State William Burns, took part in official talks with arch-foe Iran.
ISNA on Saturday quoted an unnamed Iranian official as saying Jalili wanted the US to continue its presence at the talks because he felt it would be 'more effective to reach a settlement.'
Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki also welcomed the US presence, calling it a suitable opportunity for Washington to hear the Iranian position 'first-hand and without a mediator.'
Earlier Sunday President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said he was satisfied with the outcome of the Geneva talks.
'Negotiations themselves are in general always a step forward and Saturday's meeting (in Geneva) in particular was part of this forward-going development,' the official news agency IRNA quoted the president as saying.
World powers have tried to stop Tehran's nuclear programme ever since it became clear in 2002 that Iran had hidden its activities from IAEA inspectors for 18 years.
The UN veto powers and Germany are concerned Iran could one day use its enriched uranium to build nuclear bombs, an allegation which Tehran strongly denies.
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Iran has a treaty right under the NPT to conduct the low-level (5%) uranium enrichment for non-weapons uses including power generation and other common peaceful uses of radioactive material. For the past several years the IAEA has continuously inspected and repeatedly certified Iran's nuclear program as peaceful with no diversion of radiactive materials to weapons uses. The most recently published US National Intelligence Estimate on Iran contained a finding by all 16 US intelligence agencies 'with a high degree of confidence' that Iran ceased its nuclear weapons program in 2003 and has no such program as the Iranian government has been insisting. Anyone is entitled to his/her opinion on any subject, but where the stakes are peace or war it would seem that those who ignore or reject the facts established by the IAEA and the 16 intelligence agencies of the US government regarding Iran's solely peaceful nuclear program must carry the burden of proving why the IAEA and the US government nuclear experts are wrong. As US Admiral Mullen said yesterday, with two wars already ongoing in Iraq and Afghanistan the last thing we need is another war in Iran. Uninformed and groundless allegations of an Iranian nuclear weapons program that in fact does not exist can only serve to promote another disastrous 'war of choice' similar to the Iraq war, which the vast majority of US citizens now realize was initiated upon false premises of non-existent WMDs and non-existent links between the Iraqi government and Al Queda. Iran poses no military threat to the US, Israel or Iran's neighbors, as all informed and honest military observers recognize. Anyone who says otherwise is a fool or a liar.
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guadalcanal diaryJul 20th, 2008 - 15:24:53
There are only 2 items in this article worth noting.
1) The Iranians are all for 'constant' i.e. 'never ending' negotiations.
2) They've been trying to get away with this stuff for 25 years.
It will be particularly sweet when they get defanged.
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