Bloomberg: The lifting of U.S. sanctions on Iran, while building confidence, won’t make the country give up nuclear fuel enrichment, Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi said today. Kharrazi also rejected a U.S. offer to support Iran’s membership in the World Trade Organization and to consider sales of commercial aircraft parts to Iran if the country abandons its nuclear ambitions.
Iran Says Ending U.S. Sanctions Won’t Stop Enrichment Program
EU has to accept Iran’s uranium enrichment: top Iranian negotiator
AFP: A senior Iranian nuclear negotiator said Monday that the European Union must accept Iran’s controversial uranium enrichment programme, Iranian student news agency Isna reported. “The Europeans have continuously demanded a halt to enrichment but this demand was not included in the agreement… The Europeans must accept Iran’s uranium enrichment,” said Sirus Nasseri, referring to an initial deal reached with the EU last year.
France satisfied with US concesssions to Iran
AFP: The United States has given Europe what it expected by making trade concessions to Iran to help resolve the Iranian nuclear issue, French Foreign Minister Michel Barnier said Monday. “These gestures made recently by the United States give us what we expected and show that the United States, like Russia and China . . . wants to give negatiations a chance,” Barnier told reporters in Geneva.
Iran Says May Set Deadline for Nuclear Talks
Reuters: Iran, complaining of the slow pace of negotiations with the European Union over its nuclear program, said on Monday it may soon present the EU with a take-it-or-leave-it proposal to finalize the talks. Iran insists its nuclear program is aimed at peaceful power generation, but the EU and United States fear the country may be seeking to develop atomic weapons.
Pettigrew targets Iran rights record
Toronto Star: Canada’s foreign affairs minister will today demand that Iran take action to improve its record on human rights. “The human rights violations in Iran are serious and
they must stop,” Pierre Pettigrew will say in a speech to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights. The country has failed to implement many of its international obligations with respect to human rights, the foreign minister will say, according to a text of his speech obtained by the Toronto Star.
Hadley: U.S. Not Making Iran Concessions
AP: President Bush’s national security adviser insisted Sunday the United States is not making concessions to Iran, even though Washington has softened its stance against the nation that Bush recently labeled “the world’s primary state sponsor of terror.”
Stephen Hadley, in his first television appearances since becoming national security adviser last month, said the United States is supporting European allies as they try to negotiate an end to Iran’s suspected nuclear weapons ambitions.
Woman racer upsets testosterone-driven Iran
AFP: When behind the wheel, Iranian women have to put up with all sorts of verbal abuse from the testosterone-charged types that dominate the Islamic republic’s highways — such as being told to tend to a washing machine rather than a car. But Iran’s women drivers, most of whom are clearly ill at ease navigating the anarchic road network, now have a national idol: a young woman nicknamed “Little Schumacher”.
No green light to Israel for strikes on alleged Iran nuke sites: Rice
AFP: US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice on Sunday said Washington has not backed a military strike by Israel against suspected Iranian nuclear sites, contrary to press reports. When asked by ABC television’s “This Week” program to respond to a report in the London Sunday Times that Israel
may launch a unilateral attack on Iran if diplomacy fails, Rice insisted that Washington is committed to following a diplomatic course.
Iranian minister says Bush, Rice should be tried in international court
AFP: Iran’s Intelligence Minister Ali Yunessi said Sunday that US President George W. Bush and his Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice should be put on trial in an international court for “crimes against the people”. “Rice is a terrorist and a number of crimes were committed in Palestine and in Iraq with her support. Rice, Bush and their companions should be hauled before an international tribunal for their crimes against the people,” he told the student news agency ISNA.
Iran puts seized UK naval boats on display
Reuters: Iran has put on display three British naval boats it captured last year, shrugging off protests by London which has demanded their return, the official IRNA news agency reports. The boats, seized along with their crews by Iranian Revolutionary Guards last June in the Shatt al-Arab waterway which divides southwestern Iran from Iraq, were included in an exhibition of memorabilia from Iran’s 1980-1988 war with Iraq.
