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West seeks new Iran sanctions

WASHINGTON: Six major countries agreed on Monday to seek new sanctions against Iran over its nuclear programme after Tehran failed to meet last week’s weekend deadline to respond to an offer intended to defuse the dispute, said the U.S.

Representatives of the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council and Germany decided in a high-level conference call that Iran’s lack of response to an incentives package aimed at getting it to halt sensitive atomic activity left them no option other than to pursue new punitive measures, said the Bush administration.

“We are disappointed that we have not yet received a response from Iran,” said U.S. State Department spokesman Gonzalo Gallegos. “We agreed in the absence of a clear, positive response from Iran [that] we have no choice but to pursue further measures against Iran,” he added. The conference call among senior diplomats from the six nations took place after Iran’s top nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalali told EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana that Tehran would deliver a written response to the offer on Tuesday, said Mr. Gallegos.

Iran said on Monday that it had successfully test-fired an anti-ship missile with a range of 300 km that it had developed with indigenous technology so far unused by any other country.

“No enemy vessels would be able to escape it within a 300-km-radius from the borders of Iran,” said the commander of the elite Revolutionary Guards, General Mohammad Ali Jafari. He said Iran’s arsenal meant it could easily close the Strait of Hormuz, the waterway through which much of the oil supplies pass on their way out of the Gulf. — Agencies

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