AFP: US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice reacted coolly Wednesday to reports of a possible compromise on Iran’s nuclear program, insisting that Tehran must completely halt its suspect activities. In an interview with AFP as European and Iranian negotiators held crucial talks in Geneva, Rice also left up in the air a US promise to lift objections to Tehran’s applying for membership in the World Trade Organization.
AFP INTERVIEW: Rice cool to reports of nuclear compromise with Iran
Man publicly hanged in southern Iran town
Iran Focus: Tehran, May 25 A young man was hanged in public in the southern Iranian city of Ahwaz, accused of armed robbery and disturbing the peace.
The original sentence of the man, only identified as Akbar M., had been upheld by the State Supreme Court.
Man publicly hanged in southern Iran town
Iran Focus: Tehran, May 25 A young man was hanged in public in the southern Iranian city of Ahwaz, accused of armed robbery and disturbing the peace.
The original sentence of the man, only identified as Akbar M., had been upheld by the State Supreme Court.
Exiles criticize EU for talks with Tehran
Washington Times: The main Iranian opposition group, in exile and based in France, yesterday condemned the European Union’s “betrayal” for negotiations with Tehran on its nuclear program. “Negotiating with the mullahs’ regime constitutes a betrayal,” Mohammed Mohaddessin, an official of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, said at a press conference. He accused Tehran of human rights violations.
Europeans Open Talks With Iran on Nuclear Program
Washington Post: European officials who met with Iranian negotiators yesterday to discuss the country’s nuclear program went further than the Bush administration had wanted by leaving open the possibility that Tehran could conduct preliminary work with uranium in the future, said diplomats from several countries involved in the talks in Brussels.
Iran’s Ex-Leader Seeks Return in the Trappings of a Reformer
New York Times: It is an election as contradictory as Iran itself: the front-runner is a pillar of the Islamic Revolution now cast as the man who can curb the excesses of hard-line clerics and improve relations with the country’s bogeyman, the United States.
Indeed, this politician, Ali Akhbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a former president and self-styled free-marketer, cloaks himself in the trappings of a reformist as carefully as he wears his tailored
blue-gray clerical robes.
Iran’s nuclear program must be stopped at all costs: Asselborn
AFP: The world community must “do everything” to stop Iran from one day gaining access to nuclear weapons, Luxembourg Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn, whose country currently
holds the EU presidency, said on Wednesday. “Everything must be done to avoid having a new country in this very precarious region of the world acquiring a nuclear bomb,” Asselborn told reporters on the sidelines of a Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council Security Forum meeting in the central Swedish town of Aare.
US fires warning shot over Iran nuclear talks
Financial Times: The US warned European ministers on Tuesday to stand firm in negotiations with Iran and reject any proposal that could allow the partial resumption of Tehran’s controversial nuclear programme.
The warning, given as the foreign ministers of France, Germany and the UK prepared to meet Iranian negotiators in Geneva on Wednesday, underlines the risk that the talks might break up or lead to increased transatlantic tension.
EU-Iran nuclear talks in Geneva court deadlock
AFP: Iran has warned of the danger of deadlock in decisive talks over its controversial nuclear programme, as the foreign ministers of Britain, France and Germany prepare to meet in Geneva on Wednesday with Iran’s top negotiator Hassan Rowhani. “The negotiations are so far not entirely satisfactory, but I don’t think they have been negative either,” Iranian President Mohammad Khatami said in Tehran.
West fears nuclear talks with Iran are doomed to failure
Daily Telegraph: Make-or-break talks between Europe and Iran are doomed to failure and US military action will only delay, not halt, Teheran’s suspected nuclear weapons programme, a leading think-tank predicted yesterday. In a gloomy assessment, the London-based International Institute of Strategic Studies said America had no simple military way of stopping Iran going nuclear.
