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EU Not to Refer Iran's Nuclear Case to Security Council - Spokesman

Posted on: Thursday, 22 September 2005, 12:00 CDT

Excerpt from report by Iranian Students News Agency (ISNA) website

The spokesman of the Supreme National Security Council has said that European countries have withdrawn their proposal for referring Iran to the UN Security Council, ISNA reports.

Addressing the central council of the Parties House and talking about Iran's nuclear issue, Aqa-Mohammadi referred to the Tehran agreement and said: During the meeting with British, French and German foreign ministers in Tehran we tried remove the ambiguity surrounding Iran's nuclear programme.

He added: In this connection, we allowed intrusive inspections and we implemented the Additional Protocol to the NPT prior to singing it, and we also voluntarily suspended our nuclear activities.

He went on: The suspension of our activities was a major concession to the Europeans and as I said earlier, we wanted to remove ambiguities. However, we said right from the beginning that the suspension would not last long, but as we progressed, it became clear that the Europeans wanted Iran to continue its suspension for a long period.

[Passage omitted: About the Paris and Brussels agreement, presidential elections in Iran]

Talking about the resumption of work at the Esfahan UCF, the reaction of European countries and the recent session of the IAEA Board of Governors, Aqa-Mohammadi said: The Europeans were intending to refer Iran's nuclear dossier to the UN Security Council, but they withdrew their proposal and announced that [Iran's nuclear] dossier no longer carried as much weight to be referred the UN Security Council and therefore the IAEA must deal with it.

Pointing out that China and Russia were against the referral of Iran's dossier to the UN Security Council, the spokesman said: As it was announced earlier, Iran is ready to continue the negotiations, though they will not be restricted to the EU trio and we will talk to other countries, too.

He went on: There is a long way to go before resolving Iran's nuclear issue and we should not expect an immediate solution to the issue. We are at the beginning of the road ahead and we cannot forfeit our rights.

Stating that the more the [nuclear] talks continued the more the Europeans eased off, Aqa-Mohammadi said: We have a number of plans, some of which have been propounded by President Ahmadinezhad.

Aqa-Mohammadi said: Some countries claim that Iran is making excessive demands, but this is not the case. We are after our own rights.

[Passage omitted: About high level meetings during the UN General Assembly]

Finally, the spokesman called on the press and political parties to be alert and actively follow Iran's nuclear case.

Source: BBC Monitoring Middle East

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