AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE,
TEHRAN: Iran was Wednesday weighing an international offer of incentives if it agrees to suspend uranium enrichment, with officials neither rejecting the offer nor indicating they would meet the condition.
European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana, who jetted in to Tehran to present the proposal on Tuesday, said he was “more optimistic today than a month ago” — when Iran was ruling out any talk of halting sensitive nuclear work.
“On the nuclear question, we prefer cooperation to confrontation,” the official IRNA news agency quoted Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki as saying.
“The proposals were submitted by Mr Solana and we are going to carefully study them,” said Mottaki. “Shuttle diplomacy, if it is in good faith, would allow us to find grounds for understanding.”
The package — which offers trade, diplomatic and technology incentives in return for a freeze of enrichment — was drawn up by Britain, France and Germany and is backed by the United States, Russia and China.
It is aimed at resolving fears that Iran could acquire nuclear weapons yet at the same time seeks to guarantee the country's access to atomic energy.
Top national security official Ali Larijani has said it contained “positive steps” but also “ambiguities” — signalling no immediate decision from Tehran was likely.
“I don't say that everything has been resolved but I'm more optimistic today than a month ago,” Solana told reporters in Potsdam, eastern Germany. “I hope they will call me back soon and give an answer to the proposal.
“I am ready to go back to Tehran if it is necessary,” he added.
US President George W. Bush also cautiously welcomed the Islamic republic's “positive” initial reaction.
“We will see if the Iranians take our offer seriously. The choice is theirs to make,” Bush said Tuesday in Texas. “I want to solve this issue with Iran diplomatically.”
A Western diplomat told AFP the “offer gives Iran a choice. The condition is that Iran returns to a suspension, and this condition is non-negotiable.
“The deadline is one of several weeks, basically before the end of the month and before the G8 meeting” in Saint Petersburg, Russia, in five weeks' time, he said.
“Even if the emphasis at the moment is on incentives, the suspension is something we won't back down on. Iran has taken a first step by accepting to consider the offer, whereas in the past they have rejected such a thing,” said the diplomat, who asked not to be named.
While being offered carrots, Iran also faces the stick of robust UN Security Council action, including a range of possible sanctions, if it rejects the offer.
Russia, however, still appeared to be against the use of sanctions in the dispute.
“Any measures that could be supported by Russia in the Security Council can only be in situations when Iran starts to act in contradiction to its obligations under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty,” Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov was quoted as saying by the RIA Novosti news agency.
Currently “there is no discussion of sanctions against Iran in the Security Council,” Lavrov told Russia's lower house of parliament.
Diplomats say the United States has helped sweeten the package by offering to lift certain sanctions if Tehran agrees to an enrichment freeze.
Washington has also agreed to join multilateral talks with Iran if it suspends, offering the prospect of the first substantive talks between the two arch-enemies for 26 years.
Diplomats also said that if Iran suspends and negotiations go well, enrichment on Iranian soil could be possible — but that such a situation is years away.
“It leaves the door open to enrichment under certain caveats,” a European diplomat told AFP in Vienna, referring to what would almost certainly be a process of many years to verify that Iran's nuclear programme is peaceful.
The package only calls on Iran to “suspend all enrichment-related and reprocessing activities” in order to resume talks with European negotiators Britain, France and Germany, and perhaps the United States and even Iranian allies Russia and China, the diplomat said.
But Washington stressed that the package required Tehran to suspend sensitive nuclear fuel work for the duration of any talks, pushing any possible resumption far into the future.
“That condition would have to hold throughout any negotiating term,” State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said.
“Beyond that, I am not going to speculate. Beyond that, we are truly into the realm of the hypothetical and theoretical.
