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Major powers to coax Iran on nuclear offer at IAEA

Posted on: Wednesday, 14 June 2006, 13:29 CDT

By Mark Heinrich

VIENNA (Reuters) - Iran said on Wednesday there was no world consensus pushing it to stop enriching nuclear fuel, but major powers trying to achieve this hoped a low-key approach at a U.N. nuclear watchdog debate would broaden their support.

The Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) of 114 mainly developing states, one of them Iran, ignored U.S. calls to endorse the powers' June 6 offer to Tehran of a package of incentives to end a uranium enrichment program that could yield atomic bombs.

The powers -- the five U.N. Security Council permanent members plus Germany -- hoped a debate on Thursday of the International Atomic Energy Agency's governing board would help persuade Iran to accept their offer -- though Tehran insists it has the right to enrich uranium.

"We will be keeping our statements to the board low-key to encourage Iran to come up with a positive response," said a diplomat from the "EU3" group -- Britain, France and Germany -- that conceived the incentives.

The package includes a possible resort to U.N. sanctions if Iran refuses to shelve enrichment, but plays this down and sets no deadlines.

Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki told his Italian counterpart the offer was "a significant change of approach toward Iran."

But a more powerful security official, top atomic negotiator Ali Larijani, has laid more stress on "problems" tied to a precondition that Iran mothball all uranium enrichment, which it rules out.

EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana told a Brussels news conference he had had "a constructive conversation" by telephone with Larijani on Wednesday, but gave no details.

The six powers have given Iran until a Group of 8 industrialized nations summit in mid-July to respond to the package, diplomats said.

SOVEREIGN RIGHT

Iran says its atomic drive is meant to generate electricity and cites a sovereign right to civilian nuclear energy.

The West, noting Iran has the world's second largest oil and gas reserves, suspects Tehran secretly wants to build nuclear bombs because it hid its enrichment research from the IAEA for almost 20 years and has called for Israel's destruction.

"Once a country has enriched uranium to a level necessary for nuclear power, that uranium is 70 percent of the way to being usable for nuclear weapons," a Western diplomat said.

The incentives on offer include guaranteeing a supply of uranium enriched abroad for Iranian reactors. But Iran produced a small amount of low-enriched uranium for the first time in April and declared it could not be denied its own enrichment program.

On Thursday, the IAEA board is due to debate reports by its director, Mohamed ElBaradei, citing Iran's obstruction of IAEA probes into its nuclear program and refusal to heed the Security Council's call for a halt to enrichment.

U.S. and European diplomats said their priority was to give Iran space to accept the incentives package by toning down rhetoric that could back it into a corner.

An EU statement to be read to the board said "international concerns about Iran's nuclear program remain to be resolved and repeated requests by the board remain to be fulfilled."

But the four-paragraph statement avoided accusations, urging Iran only "to respond positively" to the offer.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao urged Iran to support the package. "Iran is looking at it very seriously," Liu told reporters at a meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. "We hope all sides will come up with a positive response ... so we can create conditions favorable for the resumption of negotiations."

Washington, trying to soften Iranian allegations of a big power plot against it, nudged members of the NAM that are on the IAEA board to back the "carrot and stick" plan.

But NAM states, comprising 15 of the 35 nations on the board, intended to repeat a May 30 declaration stressing an "inviolable" right to civilian nuclear energy for fellow member Iran.

(Additional reporting by Silvia Aloisi in Rome)

Source: REUTERS

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