Iran nuclear deal 'unacceptable' to US
Iran’s response to an incentives package aimed at defusing a dispute over its nuclear programme is unacceptable, US officials said, making the prospects of new sanctions against the country more likely.
The officials told said a one-page document Iran presented to European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana in Brussels was not, as had been sought, a definitive reply to the offer from major world powers to suspend uranium enrichment and reprocessing in exchange for economic and other benefits.
Instead, the officials said it was a restatement of Tehran’s earlier insistence on the right to conduct peaceful nuclear activities and essentially a transcription of portions of recent telephone conversations to that effect between Solana and chief Iranian negotiator Saeed Jalili.
One US official familiar with the document described it as “more obfuscation and delay” and not a “real response” to the package, which was presented earlier this year by the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council and Germany.
The officials, who said they were not surprised by the response, spoke anonymously because Mr Solana’s office had not yet characterised the Iranian reply.
In Brussels, an EU diplomat said the Iranian response would be analysed and discussed “very soon” by Mr Solana and senior diplomats from the six countries that made the offer – Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the United States.
The US State Department said those diplomats would hold a conference call today to discuss the way ahead and the US officials said a discussion of new sanctions on Iran could begin as early as then.
Shortly after Mr Solana’s office received the document and forwarded copies by email to the six governments involved, the department said that anything less than full acceptance of the package would force the grouping, known as the P5-plus-1, to seek new sanctions against Iran.
“We are looking for a clear, positive response from Iran, and in the absence of that we’re going to have no choice but to pursue further measures against them,” said spokesman Gonzalo Gallegos.
The offer was reiterated to Iran on July 19, when senior diplomats from the six nations and the European Union met in person with Jalili to set an informal two-week deadline for Iran to either accept or reject it.
The meeting was notable because the Bush administration broke with its long-standing policy and sent the third-ranking State Department diplomat to the session aimed at proving its seriousness about the package.
The United States and others accuse Iran of trying to develop nuclear weapons under cover of a civilian atomic energy program. Iran denies the charge, insisting its program is peaceful, but it has thus far refused to halt enriching uranium, which can produce the ingredients for a bomb.
Iran is currently under three sets of UN security council sanctions and could soon face a fourth unless it accepts the incentives package. In addition, the United States, the European Union and individual EU members have imposed their own unilateral sanctions against Iranian banks and other institutions.
