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NUKEWARS
Hope in Iran nuclear talks?
by Staff Writers
Washington (UPI) Apr 11, 2012

Iran to present 'new initiatives' at nuclear talks
Tehran (AFP) April 11, 2012 - Iran will present "new initiatives" at nuclear talks with world powers in Istanbul at the weekend, the official leading the country's negotiating team, Saeed Jalili, said on Wednesday.

"The Iranian delegation will have new initiatives and we hope that the other party will have a constructive approach," he told Iran's Arab-language television Al-Alam, without elaborating.

Jalili, who is close to Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, also warned the Western nations taking part not to try to add to coercive pressure on Iran.

"The language of threat and pressure has never yielded results and only reinforces the determination of the Iranian people," he said.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad echoed that statement in separate comments carried by the official news agency IRNA.

"The language of force and insults will give no result," he was quoted as saying.

"I say to them in the name of the Iranian people that the method you have adopted will have no result. They need to change their language and speak with respect.

Iran's lawmakers at the same time issued a statement backing Jalili's team, advising the world powers to accept "the undeniable reality" that Iran has a right to nuclear energy and urging "an end to the current trend" of sanctions.

The 204 MPs in the 290-seat parliament also underlined Iran's "opposition to nuclear weapons" as voiced by Khamenei.

Talks on Saturday in Istanbul are to bring together Iran and the so-called P5+1 group comprising the five permanent UN Security Council members (Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States) plus Germany.

They are seen as a crucial opportunity to lower international tensions in the standoff over Iran's nuclear programme.

The United States and its European allies suspect Iran's activities mask a drive to get to the "breakout" threshhold of having the capability to make atomic weapons.

They have imposed increasingly severe economic sanctions on the Islamic republic to pressure it to halt activities, notably uranium enrichment.

Iran denies any military dimension to its nuclear activities and has responded defiantly by accelerating them. It also asserts that the sanctions are having little effect and will never force it to make concessions.

In February, Khamenei said Iran considered nuclear weapons a "sin," echoing a 2005 fatwa he is said to have issued declaring the atomic bomb haram, or antithetical to Islam.

Sadeq Larijani, the head of Iran's justice system, said the West should know that Khamenei's word "is the greatest possible guarantee" because "all the institutions in the Islamic republic's regime serve under his orders," IRNA reported.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton referred to Khamenei's position during a trip to Turkey on April 1, saying the Iran/P5+1 talks will be aimed at how to "translate what is a stated belief into a plan of action."

"If the Iranians are truly committed to that statement of belief ... then they should be open to reassuring the international community that its not an abstract belief but it is a government policy," she added.

To that end, she said Iran should end enriching uranium to 20 percent and ship out its existing stocks, and open itself up to more intense inspections by the UN nuclear watchdog.


Long-stalled talks among Iran and world powers over Tehran's nuclear enrichment program begin this weekend with a hint of daylight.

Iranian leaders have indicated in recent statements they could be amenable to dropping the nuclear fuel enrichment from the current 20 percent level, which has sent alarm bells sounding in world capitals, to less than 4 percent. There has also been a suggestion that it may be willing to discuss stockpiled 20 percent nuclear fuel, which it says it needs to produce medical isotopes.

"Based on our needs and once the required fuel is obtained, we will decrease the production and we may even totally shift it to 3.5 percent," Iranian nuclear chief Fereydoon Abbasi-Davani was quoted by Iranian media.

But the Iranian also dropped a clanger: Iran would reject any resurrection of an earlier proposal that Tehran would be provided with enriched nuclear fuel from abroad, nor would it cease enrichment, which it sees as a national right.

"The Islamic Republic won't turn back and has no interest in receiving 20 percent fuel from other countries because it has made an investment (in enrichment)," he said.

Other dark clouds over Iran's talks with the P5+1 -- China, Russian Great Britain, France, Germany and the United States -- are the world powers' expected insistence that Iran close its Fordow nuclear enrichment site. The site, near the holy city of Qom, is comprised of tunnels deep within a mountain and thus a difficult target for aerial bombardment.

Israel, which Iran has repeatedly threatened to destroy, is believed planning to do so in a worst-case scenario to prevent Iran from gaining nuclear weapons. The United States is cautioning against such action but has made it clear the option of a military strike is still on the table and that Washington would back Tel-Aviv if push comes to shove.

In the past Europe has been the voice for conciliation and diplomacy in negotiations with Iran but political and public opinion on the continent has changed.

"European Union officials (have) cited Iran's lack of transparency with the International Atomic Energy Agency as the reason (Iranian) enrichment should stop immediately and be allowed to resume only when Iran is in full compliance with the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty," said Geneive Abdo, a scholar and director of the Iran program at the Century Foundation, a U.S. think tank.

"The Europeans, like the Americans, will not be content with promises for more talks or the usual conflicting statements coming from Iranian nuclear negotiators or Iranian intransigence."

The IAEA last year reported it had found indications that Tehran has possibly looked at the process involved in making a nuclear weapon. That report, plus Iran expanding fuel enrichment was a cause for alarm.

The United States passed legislation for a stiffer economic sanctions regime, including banking restrictions that would force most nations to cease buying Iranian oil exports, which accounts for about 80 percent of the country's foreign exchange earnings.

The European Union, members of which buy Iranian oil, followed suit with a tough regime banning Iranian oil imports from this summer.

Threats by Tehran to shut the Strait of Hormuz, a major artery for ship-borne crude, in retaliation for sanctions failed to budge Washington or other capitals.

Iran's barring an IAEA team from inspecting a suspected nuclear storage site -- together with the possibility of Israeli military action -- has stiffened world resolve.

Iran's protestations of the peaceful purpose of its enrichment aren't changing that. But with its economy already suffering from impending sanctions, it just may be willing to strike some kind of deal that allows it to save face -- namely keeping its enrichment program but lowering the enrichment level to one more acceptable to world powers, and more transparency with the IAEA, a U.N. agency, if it can delay or halt the new sanctions.

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Clinton says 'urgent' for Iran results
Washington (AFP) April 11, 2012 - US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Wednesday there remained time for a diplomatic solution over Iran's nuclear program but it was "urgent" for the Islamic republic to ease concerns.

Speaking at the start of talks among foreign ministers of the Group of Eight, Clinton said an upcoming meeting between Iran and major powers was "an opportunity for Iran to address seriously the international community's concerns."

"We believe there is still time for diplomacy, but it is urgent that the Iranians come to the table to establish an environment conducive to achieving concrete results through a sustained process," Clinton said.

Iran is expected to meet representatives of six powers -- Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the United States -- starting on Saturday in Istanbul.

The talks, which come after a break of more than a year, come as Israel and the United States ramp up pressure on Iran over its contested nuclear program.

Israeli and some Western officials accuse Iran of building a nuclear bomb, but the clerical regime says its program is for peaceful purposes.

Grass hits out at Israeli move to bar him over poem
Berlin (AFP) April 11, 2012 - Author Gunter Grass has criticised in a German newspaper Israel's decision to bar him over his recent poem, comparing it to moves by the former communist East Germany and Myanmar.

"I have been prohibited entry to a country three times," the 84-year-old Nobel laureate wrote, according to a pre-released copy of Thursday's Sueddeutsche Zeitung referring to the ex-German Democratic Republic (GDR) and a 1986 attempt to travel to Myanmar.

"In both cases the usual practice in dictatorships was carried out," he wrote in the short text entitled "Then as today -- my response to latest decisions" in the same newspaper which published his controversial poem.

"Now it is the interior minister of a democracy, of the state of Israel, who is punishing me with a refusal of entry and whose grounds for the imposed compulsory measure -- according to the tone -- recalls the verdict of Minister Mielke," he said.

He was referring to Erich Mielke who was head of the Stasi secret police in East Germany.

Grass continued that the GDR no longer existed.

"But as a nuclear power of unchecked extent, the Israeli government sees itself as high-handed and until now is not open to exhortation.

"Only Myanmar arouses some small hope," he said.

On Sunday, Israeli Interior Minister Eli Yishai declared Grass persona non grata in Israel over the poem published last week which branded Israel the Middle East's biggest threat to peace.

Grass has sparked condemnation at home and abroad for the poem "What must be said", in which he voiced fears that a nuclear-armed Israel would mount a "first strike" against Iran and wipe out its people, plunging the world into a new war.

Grass, author of the renowned anti-war novel "The Tin Drum", had pressed his country for decades to face up to its Nazi past.

But he shocked his admirers in 2006 when he admitted, six decades after World War II, that he had been a member of Hitler's notorious Waffen SS as a 17-year-old -- a late revelation that undermined his until then substantial moral authority in Germany.



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