AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE,
UNITED NATIONS: Political directors of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany will meet Tuesday in Moscow to discuss the Iranian nuclear crisis, China's UN envoy said Wednesday.
Wang Guangya said he had been told by Beijing that the meeting would bring together senior officials from the United States, Britain, China, France, Russia and Germany, the so-called P-5 plus one.
The dispute over Iran's suspected effort to build an atomic bomb reached a new phase Tuesday when Tehran said it had achieved a major success in enriching uranium for nuclear fuel.
In Washington, US officials confirmed Iran would figure prominently in talks that Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns will have in Moscow next week with his counterparts in the Group of Eight powers.
State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said Burns would travel to the Russian capital for a previously scheduled meeting of political directors to prepare for the G-8 summit in July in Saint Petersburg.
“But Iran will be on the agenda of discussion for this particular meeting, certainly given Iran's recent announcement,” McCormack told reporters at the department's daily briefing.
The G-8 groups permanent Security Council members the United States, Russia, Britain and France, plus Germany, Canada, Italy and Japan.
Burns, currenty in Canada, is the number three official in the US State Department and its point man on Iran.
US officials did not confirm plans for a Moscow meeting of the permanent members and Germany that would also include China. But McCormack alluded to the possibility.
“I'm not going to rule out any other meetings that Undersecretary Burns may have on the margins, around, or as part of that G-8 political directors meeting,” he said.
A senior State Department official who asked not to be named said a meeting of the P-5 plus one “is a definite possibility, but we haven't nailed it down.”
Washington has been pressing for a tough line with Iran, including the threat of sanctions, to coax the Islamic republic away from sensitive uranium enrichment activities. Tehran says its aims are strictly peaceful.
Amid a new flurry of diplomacy, US Secretary Condoleezza Rice spoke for the second time in three days with Mohamed ElBaradei, director of the International Atomidc Energy Agency (IAEA), before he headed to Tehran for talks.
The two spoke on Monday about ElBaradei's upcoming discussions with the Iranians, McCormack said.
“It is safe to say that he is going to be re-underlining the message that … it (Iran) must suspend its enrichment programs and it needs to come back into the mainstream and into compliance with its international obligations.”
