Thursday January 13, 04:56 PM
Israel doubts Iran nuke freeze deal By Dan Williams
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israeli officials have voiced serious doubts in public for the first time over European Union efforts to persuade Iran to abandon what Israel and the United States see as a covert quest for a nuclear bomb.
Israel has never hesitated to condemn Iran's nuclear programme, but had been careful not to criticise the attempts of the Europeans to get Tehran to suspend key processes that could yield weapons-grade uranium or plutonium.
The Israeli foreign minister and military intelligence chief spoke out as the EU and Tehran negotiated political and economic rewards in exchange for agreement from Iran -- which has always denied it is trying to build an atom bomb.
The U.N. nuclear watchdog verified that Iran froze its uranium enrichment programme as promised under a deal last November, although the United States and Israel believe the Islamic Republic is using talks with the EU to buy time.
"They (Europeans) achieved an agreement now with Iran. We do not like it very much but still it is much better than it was before," Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom said at a Jerusalem conference on Wednesday.
"We believe that it should be moved, should be transferred to the (United Nations) Security Council, in order to stop the Iranians from what they are doing," Shalom said in English.
Israel and the United States had long favoured bringing Iran before the Security Council for possible sanctions over its nuclear programme. Israel is widely thought to have nuclear weapons but has a policy of never confirming or denying this.
Iran first promised the EU's "big three" in October 2003 that it would freeze uranium enrichment, a process of purifying uranium for use as fuel in nuclear power plants or weapons.
But that deal fell apart last year after Iran resumed the production of centrifuges, machines that enrich uranium by spinning at supersonic speeds.
EU REVIVES TALKS
The EU trio successfully revived the talks with Iran late last year in a move that rescued Iran from a report to the Security Council, which could have brought further international isolation and painful economic sanctions for Tehran.
The Europeans want Iran to abandon all efforts to produce nuclear fuel, though Tehran has repeatedly said the freeze would be a temporary one, lasting for no more than a few months.
Shalom spoke after Major-General Aharon Zeevi-Farkash, chief of Israeli military intelligence, publicly predicted at a security seminar on Tuesday that Iran would be capable of producing atomic weapons independently within months.
"According to estimates, Iran is not currently capable of enriching uranium to build a nuclear bomb, but it is only half a year away from achieving such independent capability, if it is not stopped by the West," Zeevi-Farkash said.
"The Iranians can reach Portugal with nuclear weapons," Zeevi-Farkash said, referring to Iran's missile programme. "This doesn't worry the Europeans; they tell me that during the Soviet regime as well they were under a nuclear threat, and I try to explain to them that Iran is a different story."
Iran does not recognise Israel's right to exist. Israeli officials refer to the Iranian nuclear programme as an "existential threat" and have hinted Israel could resort to military force to stop its arch-foe getting the bomb.
Widely believed to have the Middle East's only atomic arsenal, Israel sent warplanes to strike the Iraqi reactor at Osiraq in 1981, driving Saddam Hussein's nuclear programme underground.
But Israel is increasingly isolated in its hawkish talk.
The expected resignation of U.S. Undersecretary of State John Bolton, a hardliner on nuclear issues, may signal a shift in Washington to a less confrontational stance on Iran for President George W. Bush's second term, analysts say.