| Submit your comments on this article |
| Syria-Lebanon-Iran |
| Iran may face sanctions over nuclear program |
| 2006-04-26 |
| Iran could face UN sanctions if it does not accede to demands that it suspend its nuclear enrichment program, Britain’s foreign secretary warned on Tuesday. The UN Security Council has set a deadline of Friday for Iran to suspend enrichment of uranium, a process that can produce fuel for nuclear reactors or material for warheads. “The Iranians, in my judgment, would miscalculate if they believed that Russia or China would block appropriate and effective sanctions, which targeted the regime, not the ordinary population,” Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said in the House of Commons. “Without going into detail, of course we are thinking about these matters actively.” Straw has said he does not believe Teheran will stop the program, and Iran’s top nuclear negotiator said Tuesday it would begin hiding its nuclear program if the West took any “harsh measures” against it. “Iran needs to understand that its increasingly belligerent stance serves only to isolate it further and stiffen the resolve of the international community,” the foreign secretary said. Straw condemned as “outrageous” Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s assertion Monday that Israel was a “fake regime” that “cannot logically continue to live.” The remarks “served only to undermine further the confidence of the international community in the Iranian regime,” Straw said. Teheran says its nuclear activities are aimed only at building power plants, but many nations suspect Iran wants to build a nuclear bomb. A group of senior Iranian lawmakers said they believed the international demands for their country to cease its uranium enrichment were meant to deny it the right to develop civilian nuclear power, said a British legislators who met with the Iranian delegation Tuesday. “They’re very adamant. They don’t accept the assessment that comes from the (International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN nuclear watchdog). Their view is they’ve done nothing contrary to” what they are allowed, said Mike Gapes, chairman of the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, which invited the Iranians to visit London. “They take a very strong view that it’s about denying them access to nuclear energy, which of course it isn’t,” Gapes said. A spokesman for the Iranian Embassy said he had no information about the meetings. Gapes said about seven British lawmakers from his committee had discussed topics including the nuclear dispute, Iraq and Afghanistan with the Iranians. The visitors are Alaeddin Boroujerdi, leader of the Iranian parliament’s national security and foreign relations committee; the committee’s deputy chairman, Akbar A’lami, and lawmaker Mohammad Ashouri. The Britons expressed their unhappiness with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s calls for Israel’s annihilation and his questioning of whether the Holocaust occurred, Gapes said. “We made it very clear that statements of that kind are not things that we can accept,” he said. “The (Iranian) parliamentarians overall want to have dialogue, and they don’t want other things to stand in the way of that dialogue.” The Foreign Office said none of its officials planned to meet with the Iranian lawmakers. The group spoke to the opposition Conservative Party’s foreign affairs spokesman, William Hague, but Hague’s spokesman declined to provide details of what they discussed. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |
| #1 My God, what an astonishingly limp-dicked bunch of bloody morons. Notice to Mullahs - these daft twits don't speak for anyone else. You're gonna burn. |
| Posted by: Gromorong Slomomble9901 2006-04-26 01:54 |