Iran scoffs at US strike talk

By Edmund Blair

TEHRAN (Reuters) – Iran scoffed on Thursday at the idea of
U.S. military action to halt its nuclear program and gave no
hint of compromise before a visit by U.N. inspectors to assess
Iranian compliance with Security Council demands.

The International Atomic Energy Agency will report to the
top world body on April 28 on whether Tehran has halted uranium
enrichment and answered IAEA questions about its nuclear
activities in line with a 30-day deadline set by the council.

President Bush has vowed to stop Iran from getting atomic
weapons and has refused to rule out military options, including
nuclear strikes, if diplomacy fails.

“The United States has been threatening Iran for 27 years
and this is not new for us. Therefore we are never afraid of
U.S. threats,” Iranian Defense Minister Mostafa Mohammad Najjar
told reporters during a visit to neighboring Azerbaijan.

“If you take into account the fact that they are not doing
anything, this shows it is just talk,” he said.

Najjar said Iran was ready to negotiate, but would deal
with any challenge confronting it.

Senior IAEA inspectors were due in Iran on Friday to gauge
Iranian compliance for the report that Mohamed ElBaradei, the
U.N. watchdog’s director, is preparing for the Security
Council.

Worries about the nuclear standoff have helped drive oil
prices to record highs, with Brent crude trading above $74 a
barrel on Thursday after a steep drop in U.S. gasoline stocks.

Iran, the world’s fourth-biggest oil exporter, says it
wants only nuclear-generated electricity, not bombs.

But its declaration last week that it had successfully
enriched uranium and would now pursue large-scale production
heightened international suspicions about its intentions.

TARGETED SANCTIONS

The United States, Britain and France want the Security
Council to approve targeted sanctions on Iran, such as travel
bans and asset freezes, if it refuses to back down.

But China and Russia, the council’s other two veto-holders,
doubt punitive measures will work. Big-power talks in Moscow
this week failed to produce a consensus on future action.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said on Wednesday
the world was mobilized to deny Iran nuclear weapons.

“We are prepared to use measures at our disposal —
political, economic, others, to dissuade Iran,” she said.

Russia, however, rejected a call from the United States,
which has long maintained its own trade embargo on Iran, to
halt work on the Islamic Republic’s Bushehr nuclear power
station.

Russia’s state atomic energy agency is contracted to help
Iran build the $1 billion reactor. A senior U.S. official said
on Wednesday that a Russian withdrawal would help persuade Iran
to abandon its separate uranium enrichment program.

“Every country has the right to decide for itself with whom
and in what way it cooperates with other states,” Russian
Foreign Ministry spokesman Mikhail Kamynin said, adding that
only the U.N. Security Council could override this principle.

Speaking in Moscow, UnderSecretary of State Nicholas Burns
had also repeated Washington’s view that Moscow should cancel
the planned sale to Iran of Tor tactical surface-to-air
missiles. Moscow and Tehran say they are for defensive
purposes.

Kamynin’s statement did not mention the missile sales.

Iranian nuclear negotiators were in Moscow on Thursday but
there was no word on what they were doing. They met officials
of Britain, France and Germany late on Wednesday, but a British
diplomat said there had been no breakthrough.

China again called for a diplomatic way out of the crisis.

“We reached an agreement with Russia to … jointly push
for a resolution through negotiation,” said Foreign Ministry
spokesman Qin Gang, urging all parties to show restraint and
flexibility.

In Seoul, a senior European Union official called on Iran
to comply with IAEA demands that it suspend all enrichment and
reprocessing activities to allow a return to negotiations.

“We remain committed to a diplomatic solution,” EU
Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner told a news conference.

(Additional reporting by Christian Lowe in Moscow, Luke
Pachymuthu in Singapore and Rufat Abbasov in Baku)