Deadlock in Tehran
October 31, 2006
Six members of Germany's parliamentary committee for disarmament, arms control and non-proliferation met with Iranian government leaders in Teheran on Monday. The German representatives made an appeal for greater transparency and mutual trust in the conflict over Iran's nuclear program.
Ute Zapf, head of the delegation and member of the Social Democratic Party (SPD), called the talks "good and informative," adding that re-implementing the addendum to the protocol from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) would be a step in the right direction.
The addendum would allow for unannounced inspections by IAEA representatives and the installation of cameras in the nuclear plants.
"The good news is that we are looking for open dialogue; the bad news is that, in my opinion, the positions remain extremely rigid," said delegation member Karl-Theodor Guttenberg of the Christian Social Union (CSU).
UN sanctions possible
Germany, Great Britain and France have drafted a list of proposed economic sanctions being discussed by the UN Security Council. Russia, one of the council's veto-holding permanent members, has so far called the measures too strict, though some members of the Russian parliament said Tuesday that the country would have to support the proposed sanctions.
"The Russian political leadership will apparently have to join a new resolution on Iran proposed by Britain, Germany and France that envisages limited economic sanctions on Iran," Yuri Volkov, a deputy speaker of the State Duma, Russia's lower house of parliament, said in a statement.
Ahmadinejad said sanctions pointless
In a speech on Monday in Varamin near Teheran, Ahmadinejad said the proposed UN sanctions against his country would have no impact except to "lead to more motivation of the Iranian youth."
He did not refer in his speech to last week's expansion of his country's uranium enrichment program. A second 164-machine nuclear centrifuge cascade, used to enrich uranium hexafluoride gas for nuclear fuel, were made operational.
Iran continues to reject international claims that it is seeking to build atomic weapons and insists on its right to peaceful nuclear technology under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). The United States and European Union, however, remain concerned about a possible nuclear program as well as past anti-Semitic statements from the Iranian leader.
"President Ahmadinejad is sometimes a bit populist in his speeches to the population. I think you have to always consider that, " Zapf said. "But if he says something like the Holocaust never happened, or that Israel should be wiped off the map, of course, we take it seriously and we have to protest against that."
Iran still defiant, IAEA concerned
Ahmadinejad's supporters make up the majority in Tehran's parliament and in some parliamentary circles there have demands for a withdrawal from the NPT in the event of sanctions, arguing that such measures would demonstrate a lack of respect for Iran's rights under the terms of the treaty.
The IAEA, however, has not excluded the possibility that Iran is indeed building nuclear weapons. Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the IAEA, said in his annual report that his organization was "not in a position to confirm the peaceful nature of Iran's nuclear program, which is cause for worry," reported Reuters.