Eurasia Press & News
TEHRAN (FNA)- EU Foreign Policy Chief Javier Solana said the standoff over Tehran’s nuclear issue can be resolved only through “win-win negotiations”.
In a Friday press conference in Brussels, Solana said the European Union would provide a win-win situation in the next round of talks with Iranian nuclear officials.
“We are doing our best to secure better and transparent relations between with the Islamic Republic, which is why we exercise diplomacy in resolving Iran’s nuclear case,” the Islamic republic news agency quoted Solana as saying.
“We have no problem with generation of electricity through nuclear technology in Iran. This is their right. Clarification [on Iran’s nuclear activities] is what we want,” he added.
Solana said that the 27-member European bloc would discuss Tehran’s nuclear issue next week with Iran’s nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili in Brussels.
Deputy secretary of Supreme National Security Council, Peyman Jebelli, however, said that Jalili would address the December 9 meeting through video-conference.
The latest report on Tehran by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) says the agency has “been able to continue to verify the non-diversion of declared nuclear material in Iran”.
Iran, a signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), says it has never sought a nuclear weapon, and has repeatedly asserted that weapons of mass destruction have no place in its defensive doctrine.
The report, however, urged Iran to cooperate with the agency over the ‘alleged studies’ of weaponization attributed to Tehran by Western countries.
The ‘alleged studies’ Tehran has been accused of include a ‘green salt project, high explosives testing, and the missile re-entry vehicle project’.
The Head of Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, Gholam Reza Aghazadeh, said on December 1 that the UN nuclear watchdog, in a letter to Iranian officials, has formally acknowledged that the “green salt” issue was resolved, the Iranian students news agency reported.
Iran says its nuclear program is a peaceful drive to produce electricity so that the world’s fourth-largest crude exporter can sell more of its oil and gas abroad. The US and its western allies allege that Iran is pursuing a nuclear weapons program while they have never presented corroborative evidence to substantiate their allegations against the Islamic Republic.
Tehran also stresses that the country is pursuing a civilian path to provide power to the growing number of Iranian population, whose fossil fuel would eventually run dry.
Iran is under three rounds of UN Security Council sanctions for turning down West’s calls to give up its right of uranium enrichment, saying the demand is politically tainted and illogical.
Iran has so far ruled out halting or limiting its nuclear work in exchange for trade and other incentives, saying that renouncing its rights under the NPT would encourage world powers to put further pressure on the country and would not lead to a change in the West’s hardline stance on Tehran.
Iran has also insisted that it would continue enriching uranium because it needs to provide fuel to a 300-megawatt light-water reactor it is building in the southwestern town of Darkhoveyn as well as its first nuclear power plant in the southern port city of Bushehr.
Tehran has repeatedly said that it considers its nuclear case closed as it has come clean of IAEA’s questions and suspicions about its past nuclear activities.
Analysts believe that the US is at loggerheads with Iran due mainly to the independent and home-grown nature of Tehran’s nuclear technology, which gives the Islamic Republic the potential to turn into a world power and a role model for other third-world countries. Washington has laid much pressure on Iran to make it give up the most sensitive and advanced part of the technology, which is uranium enrichment, a process used for producing nuclear fuel for power plants.
The US attempt to push for stronger Security Council sanctions has been undermined by the country’s own national intelligence estimate, published in late 2007, which said Iran is not pursuing a weapons program.
Washington’s push for additional UN penalties also contradicts reports by the International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Mohammed ElBaradei – one in November and the other one in February – which praised Iran’s truthfulness about key aspects of its past nuclear activities and announced settlement of outstanding issues with Tehran.
The February report by the UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, praised Iran’s cooperation in clearing up all of the past questions over its nuclear program, vindicating Iran’s nuclear program and leaving no justification for any new UN sanctions.
Also in another report to the IAEA’s 35-member Board of Governors, ElBaradei once again verified Iran’s non-diversion of declared nuclear material, adding that the UN agency has failed to discover any “components of a nuclear weapon” or “related nuclear physics studies” in Iran.
The UN nuclear watchdog has also carried out at least 14 surprise inspections of Iran’s nuclear sites so far, but found nothing to support West’s allegations.
The Vienna-based UN nuclear watchdog continues snap inspections of Iranian nuclear sites and has reported that all “declared nuclear material in Iran has been accounted for, and therefore such material is not diverted to prohibited activities.”
The aforementioned reports have made any effort to impose further sanctions on Iran completely irrational.
Observers believe that Bush’s attempt to rally international pressure against Iran lost steam due to the growing international vigilance following the said reports.
Many world nations have called the UN Security Council pressure against Iran unjustified, especially in the wake of recent IAEA reports, stressing that Tehran’s case should be normalized and returned to the UN nuclear watchdog due to the Islamic Republic’s increased cooperation with the agency.
US President George W. Bush finished a tour of the Middle East in winter to gain the consensus of his Arab allies to unite against Iran.
But hosting officials of the regional nations dismissed Bush’s allegations, describing Tehran as a good friend of their countries.
Also in an apparent reference to Washington’s Middle East policy, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said this month that Isolating Iran and Syria is a misguided strategy.
“Dialogue between countries in the region is better than pressure from outside,” he said Thursday, delivering an opening speech at the World Economic Forum on Europe and Central Asia.
Nations in the region could likely find solutions to Middle East conflict and tensions in Iraq by working together and without external pressure, Erdogan said.
In August, Turkish President Abdullah Gul said that Ankara would not be influenced by others in its relations with neighbors. Gul described the expansion of regional ties as natural, saying that “for Turkey what other countries think is of no importance.”
