IAEA’s ElBaradei says Iran sanctions “bad idea”

DOHA (Reuters) – U.N. nuclear watchdog chief Mohamed
ElBaradei said on Thursday Iran posed no imminent threat and
imposing sanctions on Tehran would be a “bad idea.”

Iran says it wants only civilian nuclear power and rejected
a U.N. Security Council statement adopted on Wednesday calling
for a freeze on uranium enrichment and a report from the U.N.
nuclear agency on Iranian compliance in 30 days.

“Sanctions are a bad idea. We are not facing an imminent
threat. We need to lower the pitch,” ElBaradei, the head of the
International Atomic Energy Agency, told a forum in the Qatari
capital, Doha.

“My message to Iran: the international community is getting
impatient and you need to respond by arming me with
information,” he said.

British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said earlier that
sanctions could follow if Iran refused to halt its enrichment
programme as demanded by the U.N Security Council on Wednesday.

ElBaradei said: “There is no military solution to this
situation. It’s inconceivable. The only durable solution is a
negotiated solution.”

“I work on facts, we fortunately were proven right in Iraq,
we were the only ones that said at the time that Iraq did not
have nuclear weapons and I hope this time people will listen to
us,” he added.

Iran restarted its nuclear enrichment programme earlier
this year but insists its aim is to develop energy, not
weapons.

“Nobody has the right to punish Iran for enrichment,”
ElBaradei said. “We have not seen nuclear material diverted to
a nuclear weapon but we are not saying that the programme is
used exclusively for peaceful purposes because we still have
work to do.”

The world’s big powers told Iran on Thursday it must heed
the U.N. order to curb its nuclear programme or face isolation,
but Tehran has refused to budge.

In Berlin, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier
said the international community still aimed to find a
diplomatic solution to the stand-off.

Russia and China firmly oppose any sanctions, let alone
force, and insisted on removing language in the U.N. statement
that they feared could lead down that path.