Negotiations aimed at supplying nuclear fuel for a Tehran medical research reactor will collapse if Iran does not answer a U.N. proposal involving refinement of the Middle Eastern state's low-enriched uranium in other countries, France warned yesterday (see GSN, Nov. 4).
At talks early last month with the five permanent U.N. Security Council member nations and Germany, Iran tentatively agreed to terms intended to defer its ability to fuel a nuclear weapon with material produced from its low-enriched uranium stockpile. France, Russia and the United States indicated their support for a version of the proposal put forward by International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei, but Iran appeared to balk last week at the plan's call for the rapid transfer of much of its uranium (see GSN, Nov. 4).
Iran has not submitted a formal response to the plan, but it has called for a review of ElBaradei's proposal while putting forward several counterproposals.
"If the Iranians do not respond to the 5+1 group there will be an effective breakdown in these talks, which got off to a good start in Geneva," French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said yesterday, according to Agence France-Presse (Agence France-Presse I/Spacewar.com, Nov. 4).
"For the moment, the situation is blocked, which I deplore but we won't have sanctions right now," the Associated Press quoted Kouchner as saying. "It is not question of sanctions, it's a question of talking. Maybe sanctions will come later. ... It's not a question of them now."
"[The Iranians] are not answering us. So what are we supposed to do. To wait? Yes, we are waiting but not till the end of the world," he said (Deborah Seward, Associated Press/Taiwan News, Nov. 4).
ElBaradei yesterday said his proposal is "an opportunity, but it's also a fleeting opportunity," Reuters reported.
Iran's nuclear program is aimed at securing the country's reputation as a "regional power," the U.N. nuclear watchdog chief added. Washington and its allies have expressed concern that Iran's nuclear activities could support nuclear-weapon development; Tehran has insisted its atomic ambitions are strictly peaceful.
Years ago, Iran was willing to halt its uranium enrichment program -- an effort that can produce nuclear-weapon material as well as civilian reactor fuel -- but the Bush administration and other Western government made additional demands that were "impossible to accept," ElBaradei argued.
"They were ready to stop at an R&D (research and development) level ... that could have not have created any concern for the international community," he told members of the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.
ElBaradei criticized former U.S. President George W. Bush's refusal to negotiate with Iran unless it accepted stringent preconditions.
"Thinking that I shouldn't talk to people I disagree with, not understanding that dialogue is the only way to change behavior, has led us to where we are -- a total mess," he said (see related GSN story, today; Louis Charbonneau, Reuters, Nov. 4).
Still, if Tehran accepted the uranium transfer proposal now under consideration, "it would open the way, finally, to a new era, when Iran and the U.S. ... can work together," ElBaradei said, according to AFP.
He cautioned against attempting to curb Iran's disputed nuclear activities through military action: "The maximum is that it will delay the program for two years. You cannot bomb knowledge. All it would do is get Iran ... to go on a crash course for nuclear weapons."
"You cannot have a security system that is not perceived to be balanced," he added, referring to the widely held view that Israel possesses nuclear weapons. "The only solution is to rid the whole Middle East of weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear weapons" (Agence France-Presse II/Spacewar.com, Nov. 4).
Israel's interception yesterday of a massive arms shipment, allegedly sent by Iran to Lebanon's Hezbollah organization, could help Jerusalem rally more international pressure on Tehran to halt its nuclear program, AFP quoted Israeli newspapers as saying.
"Officials in Jerusalem had not dared even to dream of better timing for the capture of the vessel carrying so much arms and ammunition bound for Hezbollah. The capture of the ship was, for Israel, like a gift from heaven," the Israeli newspaper Maariv said in an editorial.
"The Iranians have been caught red-handed -- an Iranian company involved in the exporting of arms to Hezbollah as Western suspicions of Iran peak after Tehran's murky response to the compromise proposal on uranium enrichment," Haaretz added (Joseph Krauss, Agence France-Presse III/Yahoo!News, Nov. 5).