EU to hold new nuclear talks with Iran

Mark Tran
Friday April 20, 2007
Guardian Unlimited

Iran's chief nuclear negotiator, Ali Larijani, speaks at a press conference. Photograph: Vahid Salemi/AP

The EU foreign policy chief and Iran's top negotiator are to meet for the first time since February in a fresh attempt to break the deadlock over Tehran's nuclear enrichment.

An EU official said the principle for the meeting, taking place next week, was established, adding: "It will seek to see whether we can resume negotiations."

Earlier, the Iranian ISNA news agency said Javier Solana and Ali Larijani had agreed to meet after a telephone conversation - the latest in a series of contacts since the UN security council tightened sanctions against Tehran last month.

ISNA quoted Mr Larijani as telling Mr Solana: "While Iran keeps its obvious right in developing a peaceful nuclear programme, it is always ready to have constructive negotiations with other parties.

"Based on the agreement of the two parties, the new round of Larijani's and Solana's negotiations will start on April 25."

The UN security council has set a deadline of late May for Iran to halt its uranium enrichment programme or face tougher sanctions.

After introducing limited measures in December, the security council last month stepped up the pressure, banning Iranian arms exports and freezing the assets of 28 individuals and companies involved in the country's nuclear or ballistic missile programmes.

Earlier this month, the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, said Iran was capable of enriching uranium on an industrial scale - a claim greeted with scepticism by experts.

Tehran has doubled the number of operating centrifuges at its new Natanz plant in recent weeks, but has not shown it can run them non-stop for extended periods - the key to enriching enough uranium for electricity or the core of a nuclear bomb, according to analysts.

In defiance of the UN, Iran has started up more than 1,300 centrifuges in an accelerating campaign to lay a foundation for "industrial scale" enrichment involving more than 50,000, the International Atomic Energy Agency said in a leaked note this week.

Iran insists its nuclear work is for generating electricity, but the west suspects the programme is aimed at producing weapons.

The US has said it wants a diplomatic resolution to the nuclear standoff, but has not ruled out military action if that fails. It recently strengthened its military presence in the region by sending a second aircraft carrier group to the Persian Gulf.

Discussing missile defence

18 Apr 2007 - On Thursday, 19 April 2007, a reinforced meeting of the North Atlantic Council was held at NATO HQ in Brussels. The purpose of this session was to exchange views on missile defence.

On the same day missile defence was also discussed at the reinforced meeting of the NATO-Russia Council at ambassadorial level.

Click here to watch the discussion.

more on nato missile defense.

U.S. fails to convince Russia on missile shield in Europe

BRUSSELS, April 19 (Xinhua) -- The United States failed on Thursday to convince Russia on Washington's plan to deploy missile defense facilities in Eastern Europe.

"I would like to underscore that possible deployment of U.S. missile defense site in Europe is not something pleasant to us," Russian ambassador to NATO, Konstantin Totskiy, told reporters after a meeting with ambassadors from NATO countries and U.S. officials.

"We are against the fact that such decisions are taken just unilaterally."

But he added that Russia will not be engaged in an arms race with the United States as its predecessor, the Soviet Union, did in the Cold War.

Russia would rather develop a cheaper "asymmetrical answer" to possible threats posed by the U.S. deployment, said the ambassador.

Totskiy said Russian and American experts hold different views on missile threats to Europe.

The two sides diverge on how soon the threats will come and the scale of them, he said. They also differ on the missile capability of Iran, which the United States has named as a possible source of threat.

Moscow has also concerns that the United States may increase the number of interceptor missiles.

The U.S. and NATO have been saying that the 10 interceptors planned for deployment in Poland do not pose a threat to Russia at all.

Totskiy argued that no nation, even a so-called rogue state, will be able to launch a massive missile attack on Europe unless it has 100 or even several hundred missiles.

Therefore, he argued, the U.S. might have to have more interceptors to shield Europe.

"We know by experience that when we have a system, we will continue its development because the system cannot stop at a point."

Russia's proposal in this situation is to use diplomatic and political measures to prevent certain countries from having so many missiles, he said.

On U.S. offers to have more cooperation with Russia in terms of missile defense, such as sharing early warning data, interoperability of theater missile defense systems and joint exercises, Totskiy said Russia is ready to cooperate, but only on equal footing.

The United States is negotiating with Poland and the Czech Republic for the deployment of interceptor missiles and a radar tracking system in the two countries respectively.

Washington says the system would be able to help most of its European allies fend off long-range missile attacks.

Director of the U.S. Missile Defense Agency, Lt. Gen. Henry Obering, Undersecretary of Defense Eric Edelman, and chief of the U.S. State Department's non-proliferation bureau, John Rood, presented the U.S. plans to its NATO allies and Russia.