The Hindu : Front Page : Iran gives contradictory signals

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Mar 13, 2006

Front Page

Front Page

Iran gives contradictory signals

Atul Aneja

DUBAI: Iran has given contradictory signals about its intentions, with its Foreign Ministry retracting its position that it was no longer considering the Russian proposal on nuclear enrichment to defuse tensions with the West.

"The Russian proposal is not on our agenda any more," Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi said on Sunday on the sidelines of an international energy conference in Teheran. But later the Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) quoted him as saying that, "Iran is well-prepared to extend a moratorium on uranium enrichment if an agreement was reached with respective states to that effect through negotiations with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)." He said the Russian proposal was still negotiable if it took Iran's right to enrich uranium on a research scale at home.

On March 7, Russia and the United States rejected the Iranian proposal to limit itself to small-scale enrichment of uranium under international supervision for research purposes alone.

Russia has offered to carry out uranium enrichment on its soil and both sides have been holding talks on this. The move is meant to allay fears in the West, especially the U.S., that Iran could divert enriched uranium for making atomic weapons by processing the material on its own territory.

Withdrawal from NPT

Threatening possible withdrawal from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said: "If we reach a point where the existing mechanisms do not provide for the right of the Iranian people, then the policies of the Islamic Republic of Iran would be possibly revised and reconsidered ... At the moment we believe that there is a chance for different sides to continue the negotiations."

Iranian officials have so far given mixed signals on whether they would use the "oil weapon" in response to western pressures on the nuclear issue.

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