Agence France-Presse,
Washington: Iran warned Thursday it would take a “longer stride” in its hotly contested nuclear program if it is slapped with a third set of United Nations sanctions. The comment in a Newsweek interview by Iran's top nuclear negotiator, Ali Larijani, came as Larijani prepared to discuss the row with European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana in Portugal this weekend.
Iran has been hit with two sets of UN Security Council sanctions and faces a third for its refusal to suspend uranium enrichment work, the process which makes nuclear fuel and the fissile core of an atom bomb.
“What would be the benefit? Have the past two resolutions impeded our activities?” Larijani was quoted as saying, a day ahead of another set of talks with International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Mohamed ElBaradei.
“They can pass another resolution, and we would make another, longer stride. Therefore they cannot solve the Iranian nuclear program,” he said, defying pressure led at the UN by the United States and EU powers.
Larijani refused to elaborate on the potential new stride, but said it would not necessarily mean accelerating the uranium-enrichment program.
“We don't see a need for a higher degree of enrichment. Because our basic theory is to (create civilian nuclear) fuel. And we don't need higher (weapons) grades of enrichment,” he told the magazine.
Larijani said that his talks with Solana in Lisbon Saturday would address “meticulous expert-level work done on the ideas so far being introduced,” involving increased surveillance of Iranian nuclear facilities by the IAEA.
“What is important here is that Iran's logic dictates that we do accept the supervision of the agency,” he said.
Previous talks between Solana and the Iranian official have foundered on the Islamic republic's refusal to consider either a moratorium or a suspension of its uranium enrichment, and the crisis has only escalated.
Larijani welcomed recent remarks by ElBaradei that since Iran has already obtained the knowledge of how to enrich the nuclear fuel, it should be allowed to keep some enrichment capability in any deal.
The nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) gives non-nuclear powers the right to enrich, the Iranian official said, “and we believe that nobody should deviate toward a bomb.”
Larijani accused the United States and Britain of flouting the NPT by developing “new generations of nuclear weapons” and noted that non-signatories such as India and Pakistan had built their atomic bombs.
But he added that Iran was committed to cooperating with the IAEA and said: “We would like to work within the framework of the NPT.”
