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Russian President Vladimir Putin. (AP)
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Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. (AP)
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Saudi Arabia's Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal. (AP)
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| By Associated Press January 17, 2006 |
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Iran last week removed U.N. seals from its main uranium enrichment facility and resumed research on nuclear fuel after a 2½-year freeze. It says its intentions are peaceful and it only wants to produce nuclear energy. But Western nations suspect Tehran seeks nuclear weapons.
Key members of the U.N. Security Council have agreed that Iran must fully suspend its nuclear program, but came to no agreement on whether to refer the dispute for action by the council.
Russian President Vladimir Putin held out hope for a compromise that could avoid such action and Iran's envoy to Moscow welcomed his proposal.
At a seven-hour meeting in London on Monday, China, Russia, France, Germany, America and Britain expressed "serious concerns" about Iran's decision last week to resume research on nuclear fuel and break the U.N. seals at its main uranium enrichment plant, Britain's Foreign Office said.
"There was agreement on the importance of Iran returning to the full suspension and negotiating process," a Foreign Office spokesman said, speaking on condition of anonymity in keeping with government policy.
Britain, France, Germany and America have been pushing for a referral since the Europeans declared last week that talks with Tehran had reached a dead end. Russia, which is deeply involved in building Iranian reactors for power generation, and China - heavily dependent on Iranian oil to power its booming economy - have been wary of the idea.
China has suggested that bringing Iran before the Security Council, which has the power to impose sanctions, would worsen tensions. Iran says it will cease cooperating with the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog if it is referred to the council.
Putin suggested there might still be hope of avoiding that path.
He said after meeting German chancellor Angela Merkel in Moscow that Iran has not ruled out conducting its uranium enrichment in Russia, which would allow for close oversight. The proposal, also floated last year, would guarantee uranium would be enriched enough to power nuclear energy plants, but not enough to build weapons.
"We have heard various opinions from our Iranian partners on that issue. One of them has come from the Foreign Ministry - our partners told us they did not exclude the implementation of our proposal," Putin said. "In any case, it's necessary to work carefully and avoid any erroneous moves."
Iran's ambassador to Moscow praised the idea.
"We consider it constructive and are carefully studying it. This is a good initiative to resolve the situation. We believe that Iran and Russia should find a way out of this jointly," Gholamreza Ansari said in comments translated into Russian and shown on state Channel One television.
Speaking while the London meeting was still under way, Putin said his proposal didn't mean Russia's strategy differed from the one the Western powers are pursuing.
"Russia, Germany, our European partners and the United States have very close positions on the Iranian problem," Putin said.
China made no immediate comment after the meeting.
Earlier, Monday, the Foreign Ministry in Beijing took a cautious tone.
"China believes that under the current situation, all relevant sides should remain restrained and stick to solving the Iranian nuclear issue through negotiations," the ministry said in a statement.
British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, who was not at the meeting, said after it ended that London also wanted Iran to return to talks.
"What we hope is that as a result of this and other diplomatic pressure is that the Iranians will come back to the negotiating table ... and will recognize the good intent of the European three," he told Channel 4 news, referring to Britain, France and Germany, which negotiated with Tehran for 2 1/2 tense years.
However, diplomats from the three countries informed the others at the meeting that they plan to call for an emergency board meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency on Feb. 2-3 to discuss what action to take against Tehran, the Foreign Office said.
That could be a step toward referral to the Security Council.
The United States and its European allies fear Iran intends to build an atomic bomb, and Iran's new hard-line president's sharp anti-Israeli comments have only fueled their anxiety.
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, traveling in Africa, said America wants a vote as soon as possible on whether to refer Iran to the Security Council, arguing that Tehran would take advantage of any delay.
"We've got to finally demonstrate to Iran that it can't with impunity just cast aside the just demands of the international community," she said.
Straw said the "onus is on Iran" to prove its program is peaceful. He said the international community's confidence had been "sorely undermined by a history of concealment and deception" by the clerical regime.
Tehran insists its intentions are peaceful and says it only wants to produce electricity. Iranian state radio reported Monday that the country had allocated the equivalent of US$215 million for the construction of what would be its second and third nuclear power plants.
Saudi Arabia: West partly to blame for Iranian nuke program
Saudi Arabia's foreign minister said he opposed any attempt by Iran to develop nuclear weapons, but alleged the West was partly to blame for Tehran's nuclear program.
In an interview broadcast Monday by the British Broadcasting Corp., Prince Saud al-Faisal said Western nations' failure to stop Israel from becoming a nuclear power "has done the damage we are all suffering from now."
The prince, in London for a conference on terrorism, said he hoped Iran would not seek to develop nuclear arms.
"Where are they going to use these weapons? If they hit Israel, they are going to kill Palestinians. If they miss Israel, they are going to hit Saudi Arabia or Jordan," he said. "Where is the gain in that?"
He said Saudi Arabia would "absolutely not" seek to develop a nuclear weapon if Iran had one.
During his speech at the conference on terrorism, al-Faisal said the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was encouraging violence in the Middle East.
"The illegal and unjust policy of Israel in the occupied territories, which has resulted in constant humiliation and suffering for the Palestine people, is breeding anger and hatred in the Arab and Islamic world," he said.
Al-Faisal urged Israel to respond to an earlier peace offer by Arab nations.
During the 2002 Arab summit in Beirut, he said, Arab countries offered Israel peace in exchange for its withdrawal from all Arab territories occupied in the 1967 Mideast War, including east Jerusalem.
"Israel has yet to respond to this historic gesture," he said.
Egypt: no to nuclear military power
Egypt on Monday said it supported using nuclear technology for peaceful purposes but rejected the emergence of a nuclear military power in the region, in its first official reaction to the standoff over Iran's nuclear program.
"All countries should adhere to their commitments in a way to allow the international community to be sure of the peaceful nature of the Iranian nuclear program, as we do not accept the emergence of a nuclear military power," Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit said in a statement.
Aboul Gheit said Egypt was "closely watching" the development of the Iranian nuclear issue "out of its absolute keenness to support all the efforts aimed at consolidating the nuclear nonproliferation (policy) not only at the regional level but all over the world."
He said Egypt believes dialogue is the best way to solve the crisis.
Aboul Gheit reiterated Egypt's old call for a weapons of mass destruction-free Mideast and said "the first step toward that is Israel's joining of the (Nuclear) Nonproliferation Treaty and allowing the IAEA inspectors to inspect its nuclear installations, which nobody knows anything about them."
Israel is thought to harbor several hundred nuclear warheads, but has a policy of not confirming its nuclear arsenal.
Last month, the six leaders of the Gulf Cooperation Council, at their summit in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, urged Iran for closer cooperation with the United Nations over its nuclear program and called on Israel to join the NPT and open its nuclear facilities to inspectors.
Egypt also runs small-scale nuclear programs for medical and research purposes and has previously denied that it is trying to develop a nuclear weapons program.
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