[FREE IRAN Project] In The Spirit Of Cyrus The Great

[cyrus]

Tuesday, January 17, 2006

R E G I O N: Rice says world must act fast against Iran

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2006%5C01%5C17%5Cstory_17-1-2006_pg4_14
* Jack Straw says Tehran bears the burden of responsibility in clarifying nuclear intentions

MONROVIA/ LONDON: US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said on Monday Iran ‘crossed the threshold’ with its recent nuclear actions and the world must act fast to send Tehran to the UN Security Council.

The Security Council’s five permanent members and Germany are holding talks in London on Monday in search of a common strategy to tackle Iran’s resumption of atomic fuel research and development after a two-year moratorium.

Rice said the United States wanted the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to hold an emergency meeting as soon as possible, fearing if IAEA members waited until a scheduled meeting in March this would give Iran a chance to further ‘obfuscate’ over any nuclear weapons plans.

“We just can’t let them do that,” she told reporters traveling with her to Liberia for the inauguration of Africa’s first woman president.

Rice said she had ‘very good’ conversations with many IAEA foreign ministers over the weekend and she was optimistic of their support in referring Iran to the Security Council where it could ultimately face sanctions.

“We have got to finally demonstrate to Iran that it can’t with impunity just cast aside the just demands of the international community,” Rice told reporters, without specifying which ministers she had spoken to or which countries backed an immediate referral.

“There is some work to do because you would like there to be a strong consensus for a vote. But whatever the numbers of the vote, I don’t think there is any doubt that people are quite clear that Iran has crossed the threshold,” she added.

Rice would not be drawn on whether she thought the US had the support of Russia or China for a UNSC referral, but she said Moscow voiced strong disappointment after Iran removed UN seals at its uranium-enrichment plant and resumed nuclear fuel research last week. In addition, Iran had spurned Russia’s offer to help Tehran meet its civilian nuclear needs without increasing proliferation risks, she added.

Asked about military options and whether force should be used now or at least threatened against Iran, Rice reiterated that the current focus was on diplomacy.

“I don’t think it helps really to speculate. We have said all along that the president always keeps all of his options but the course that we are on is the diplomatic course.”

Meanwhile, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said it is up to Iran to reassure the international community that it really is not pursuing the development of nuclear weapons. Speaking at a security conference in London, where senior diplomats were holding a closed-door meeting on Iran, Straw underlined the danger of weapons of mass destruction falling into the hands of terrorists.

“This is why the international community’s stand against Iran’s continued non-compliance with its Non-Proliferation Treaty obligations and successive resolutions of the board of governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency is so important,” he said.

“The onus is on Iran to act to give the international community confidence that its nuclear programme has exclusive peaceful purposes - confidence, I’m afraid, that has been sorely undermined by its history of concealement and deception.”

Straw, speaking at the Royal United Services Institute think-tank, said: “It is because of Iran’s failure up to now to bring itself into compliance that we are now considering with our partners in Europe and the permanent five of the Security Council a referral of Iran to the Security Council through an emergency meeting of the IAEA board.” agencies

[cyrus]

US steps up pressure on defiant Iran

http://www.theage.com.au/news/world/us-steps-up-pressure-on-defiant-iran/2006/01/16/1137260002236.html

SENIOR Republican and Democrat members of Congress have urged swift action against Iran, including UN-mandated economic sanctions, as the sense of crisis over Iran's decision to resume uranium enrichment escalated in Washington.

Republican Senator John McCain, a leading candidate for the party's presidential nomination in 2008, said Iran's decision to restart research into enriching uranium, a major step on the road to developing nuclear weapons, was "the most grave situation we have faced" since the end of the Cold War.

"The Iranians showed their face when their President came to the UN and advocated the eradication of the State of Israel from the Earth," he said. "We must go to the UN now for sanctions.

"If the Russians and the Chinese, for reasons that would be abominable, do not join us, then we will have to go with the states that are willing."

Asked whether the US should consider military action against Iran, Senator McCain said it should not be ruled out, though he said that any military action could have grave consequences.

"But there's only one thing worse than the United States exercising the military option; that is a nuclear-armed Iran. The military option is the last option but cannot be taken off the table," he said.

Democrat Senator Dianne Feinstein, a leading critic of the Bush Administration's handling of the Iraq war, agreed with Senator McCain that Iran's nuclear ambitions represented a grave threat not only to Middle East stability, but to the "whole international community".

"Iran has much more opportunity to create devastation in the Middle East than Iraq at this time," she said. "I think it's a very serious threat."

In London, US and European representatives are meeting to discuss how to get Russia and China to agree to Security Council action against Iran, something that China, in particular, has shown great reluctance to countenance. The meeting follows a decision by the EU negotiating countries — Britain, France and Germany — with Iran to end talks after Tehran said it would remove the special seals from its uranium enrichment equipment.

Democrat and Republican members of Congress agreed that it was preferable for action to be taken against Iran through UN-imposed sanctions, but there was recognition that Russia and China might veto such a move.

Russia has a $US1 billion ($A1.3 billion) project in Iran to build the country's first nuclear reactor and Iran is one of China's major oil suppliers. Senator McCain agreed that any action against Iran by the UN could seriously disrupt oil supplies and have a serious impact on the world economy. "If the price of oil has to go up then that's a consequence we would have to suffer."

Meanwhile, Newsweek has reported that International Atomic Energy Agency head Mohamed ElBaradei says he cannot be sure that Iran's nuclear program is for peaceful purposes. "For the last three years we have been doing intensive verification in Iran and even after after three years, I am not yet in a position to make a judgement on the peaceful nature of the program," he says.

"If they have the nuclear material and they have a parallel weaponisation program along the way, they are really not very far — a few months — from a weapon."