Britain says there is a new urgency to deal with Iran’s threat

Iran Focus: London, Jan. 17 – Britain said on Tuesday that there was a new urgency to deal with Iran’s nuclear activities which the West believes is part of a covert atomic weapons program. Iran Focus

London, Jan. 17 – Britain said on Tuesday that there was a new urgency to deal with Iran’s nuclear activities which the West believes is part of a covert atomic weapons program.

At a press briefing in London, Prime Minister Tony Blair’s spokesman said that Iran had to abide by its international obligations if a diplomatic solution to the international standoff was to be reached.

Iran unilaterally resumed previously-suspended nuclear research and development at its uranium enrichment facility in Natanz last week against the wishes of the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Tuesday that Moscow believed that nuclear talks between the European troika – Britain, France, and Germany – and Iran could resume only if Tehran reintroduced its moratorium on nuclear research, a move that Tehran has already outright rejected.

Asked whether Russia and China had come closer to the EU position of referring the Islamic Republic’s nuclear file to the United Nations Security Council, Blair’s spokesman said, “The fact that the IAEA Board meeting had been brought forward by about a month spoke for itself”.

“That showed that everyone accepted that there was now a new urgency to deal with this issue, which was a good thing”.

The IAEA Board of Governors, set to meet February 2-3, are likely to refer Tehran’s file to the Security Council.

“People only had to look at the Iranian President’s remarks on Israel to understand why we had to persuade them to abide by those international obligations”, he said.

Since taking office, hard-line Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had described the Holocaust as a “myth” and said that Israel must “wiped off the map”.