|
|
 |
 |
 |
| Saturday, 24 January 2004 |
 |
|
 |
World | |
| News Business Features Editorial Security Politics World Letters Sports Obituaries
|
EU's big 3 want Iran to drop more nuke activities VIENNA, Friday (Reuters) France, Britain and Germany want Iran to suspend more activities related to enriching uranium, a technology that can be used to make nuclear weapons, diplomats said. Last week, Western diplomats told Reuters Tehran has been acquiring large amounts of equipment for centrifuges, used to enrich uranium, despite its promise in November to suspend all enrichment-related activities. They said it showed Iran had failed to deliver on its pledge which was meant to build confidence. On Monday, the foreign ministers of France, Germany and Britain met and discussed Iran's insistence on applying a very limited definition of the term "enrichment-related" to enable Tehran to continue amassing centrifuges. One diplomat in Vienna said France and Britain made it clear they, like International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Mohamed ElBaradei, found Tehran's actions "unacceptable". Germany does not like Tehran's behaviour, but takes a softer view and believes talks with Iran would be enough to make the Iranians go further in their suspension. The United States says Tehran's civilian nuclear programme is merely a front for building nuclear weapons and wants to see Iran face international sanctions. Another diplomat said the IAEA had given Iran a list of all the activities it wanted Tehran to suspend. "The answer the Iranians gave was totally unacceptable (to the IAEA)," he said, adding that Iran was interpreting the suspension as narrowly as possible to give it the freedom to do everything short of actually enriching uranium. Enrichment is a process of purifying uranium to make it useable as fuel in nuclear power plants or as fissile material for weapons. A third diplomat, familiar with the three European countries' views told Reuters: "The three countries continue to work with the Iranians on this issue." Meanwhile the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog told Iran on Thursday it faced "serious consequences" unless it cooperated with a probe of its atomic programme, which Washington suspects is aimed at building a bomb. "They (the Iranians) know it's very important for the agency to come to a conclusion that the Iran programme is for peaceful purposes," ElBaradei told reporters in Davos, Switzerland at the World Economic Forum. |
|
News | Business | Features
| Editorial | Security
Produced by Lake House |
