IRAN: Iran says it needs time to review atomic 'timeout'

Iranian supreme national security council chief Ali Larijani held a joint press conference with his Russian counterpart Igor Ivanov after their bilateral negotiations in Tehran. Ali Larijani said Iran needed time to review a suggestion by the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency for a "timeout" under which Iranian nuclear work and U.N. sanctions would be suspended together. Iran said on Sunday (January 28) it needed time to review a suggestion by the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency for a 'timeout' under which Iranian nuclear work and U.N. sanctions would be suspended together. U.N. atomic watchdog chief Mohamed ElBaradei told a Davos forum that military action against Iran's nuclear sites, a step Washington has not ruled out, would be crazy and the two sides should stop flexing muscles and start direct dialogue. "Iran needs time to review such an initiative (for a 'timeout') to see whether it has the capacity to resolve Iran's nuclear issue," Iranian chief nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani said when asked about the 'timeout' proposal. "Such a suggestion should be developed," Larijani told a news conference with visiting Russian Security Council Secretary Igor Ivanov. Iran has previously said it was ready to consider proposals to end the stand-off, such as an idea for Iran to enrich uranium on Russian soil. But it never agreed to that or other plans, prompting Western states to accuse Tehran of time-wasting. The West accuses Iran of seeking to build atomic bombs, a charge Tehran denies, saying it only wants to make electricity. "ElBaradei's initiative to have a 'timeout' can be considered, and through this suggestion a political solution can be found for this (nuclear) issue," Ivanov said through a translator, adding that the dispute had "no military solution". U.N. sanctions were slapped on the Islamic Republic on December 23 for its failure to suspend uranium enrichment, a process which can be used to make fuel for power stations or material for bombs. It was given 60 days from that time to halt the work. The United States has said it wants diplomacy to resolve the stand-off but has not ruled out military action if that fails. U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney told Newsweek magazine that Washington was sending a "strong signal" to Iran by deploying a second aircraft carrier to the Gulf. He said it showed "we clearly have significant capabilities, and that we are working with friends and allies as well as the international organisations to deal with the Iranian threat." Moderate politicians in Iran, particularly critics of anti-Western President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, have been counselling caution and possibly even suspending enrichment, until now a step opposed by Iran. Ahmadinejad has been blamed by critics for exacerbating the stand-off with the West by his fiery speeches, although the final say in nuclear policy and other matters of state lies with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's highest authority. Iran has said it will press ahead with its plans to expand its enrichment capabilities, now limited to two experimental cascades of 164 centrifuges each. It said it would soon start installing 3,000 centrifuges. A politician said on Saturday (January 27) work on installing those new machines had started, but an atomic official quickly denied it.

ITN Source | January 29, 2007

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