AMERICAN LEBANESE COORDINATION COUNCIL

Iran’s Offer: Lebanon Settlement for Nuclear Program

Posted in NEWS & ANALYSIS by Administrator on the July 25th, 2008
Iranian Vice President Reza Aghazadeh said Thursday that negotiations with world powers on Tehran’s nuclear program could solve problems in Lebanon and Iraq. 
“If the negotiations get under way, then solutions could be found for many problems like Iraq, Lebanon or fuel prices,” said Aghazadeh, who also heads Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization.

He spoke to reporters after his meeting in Vienna with Mohamed El-Baradei, head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog International Atomic Energy Agency, a week after Tehran lodged its latest proposals with world powers in Geneva.

The New York Times published Tuesday what it said was an informal document outlining Iran’s strategy, calling for seven more rounds of talks, stressing the need for an end to sanctions, and making no mention of an incentives package offered by six world powers in exchange for a suspension of uranium enrichment by the Islamic republic.

World powers have offered to start pre-negotiations during which Tehran would add no more uranium-enriching centrifuges and in return face no further sanctions — the so-called “freeze-for-freeze” approach.

Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the United States — the so-called “P5+1″ powers leading the talks — have warned that Iran has only a fortnight to respond to their latest offer seeking to end a five-year crisis that has raised fears of regional conflict and sent oil prices spiraling.

Aghazadeh did not comment on the “freeze-for-freeze” offer, saying only that the P5+1 group “needs time to study our proposal,” adding that Iran hopes “it will merge into one single document in the end” that both sides can agree to.

The Iranian nuclear chief’s talks with the IAEA come the day after Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad vowed he would make no concessions in the country’s nuclear drive.

Iran is already under three sets of U.N. Security Council sanctions over its refusal to halt sensitive uranium enrichment activity, which the West fears could be aimed at making nuclear weapons.

Tehran denies the allegations, insisting that its program is designed to provide energy for its growing population.

Iranian officials have repeatedly said they have no intention to freeze enrichment and that as a signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, Iran has the right to make its own nuclear fuel.(AFP-Naharnet)
 

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