Iran Mocks Kerry's Idea for a Deal on Uranium
New York Sun - By Eli LakeOct 4, 2004
WASHINGTON - The regime in Iran is rejecting Senator Kerry's proposal, floated last week in his debate with President Bush, to provide the mullahs with nuclear fuel in exchange for dismantling their atomic fuel cycle.
The spokesman for the foreign ministry in Tehran told reporters yesterday, "We have the technology and there is no need for us to beg from others." Entering such an agreement, the spokesman, Hamid Reza Asefi, said, would be "irrational."
"What guarantees are there?" he said. "Will they supply us one day and then, if they want to, stop supplying us on another day?"
Mr. Kerry criticized the president in Thursday's debate for failing to give adequate support to an initiative by Britain, France, and Germany to persuade Iran to suspend its enrichment of uranium.
In response to a question about whether sanctions and diplomacy can curb North Korea's and Iran's nuclear ambitions, the Massachusetts senator said: "I think the United States should have offered the opportunity to provide the nuclear fuel, test them, see whether or not they were actually looking for it for peaceful purposes. If they weren't willing to work a deal, then we could have put sanctions together. The president did nothing."
Iran's rejection of Mr. Kerry's proposal could undermine his campaign's central argument that America would be safer if he was president. In the debate with Mr. Bush on foreign policy, which many polls and pundits said Mr. Kerry won, the Democratic candidate repeatedly stressed that the president had poor judgment in foreign affairs, calling the Iraq war a mistake and deriding the White House's failure to conduct diplomacy effectively.
Mr. Kerry's proposal is similar in its dynamic to the 1994 Agreed Framework that Defense Secretary Perry signed with North Korea. Under that pact, Pyongyang agreed to end its enrichment of uranium, and in exchange America and the European Union agreed to help build two light-water nuclear reactors for North Korea and provide regular fuel shipments. In 2002, the North Koreans informed the State Department that they had been enriching uranium in sites that the regime's envoys said were not covered by the 1994 agreement.
Nonetheless, the Bush White House interpreted the information as a violation of the spirit of the accord and temporarily ended its limited contacts with the regime.
This is not the first time Mr. Kerry has criticized the president for failing to explore diplomatic openings with Iran. Last year, in remarks to the Council on Foreign Relations, Mr. Kerry blasted the president for not pursuing Tehran's offer to send senior members of Al Qaeda to third countries in exchange for America's release of anti-Iran rebels captured in Iraq.
A Kerry adviser and fund-raiser, Hassan Nemazee, sued the founder of the Student Movement Coordination Committee for Democracy in Iran, Aryo Pirouznia, for defamation charges after Mr. Pirouznia charged that Mr. Nemazee, who is a New York investment banker, had illicit business and political contacts with the Islamic republic. Mr. Pirouznia has countersued Mr. Nemazee in federal district court in Dallas, on grounds that the Kerry adviser's lawsuit was frivolous.
Last month President Khatami announced that Iran would move forward in completing the nuclear fuel cycle after his government formally told the International Atomic Energy Agency that it would no longer keep a pledge to suspend enrichment activities while the U.N. body continued to inspect previously undeclared centrifuges and laboratories.
American diplomats at the energy agency pushed last month to take Iran's transgressions to the U.N. Security Council, where the international body could consider penalties against Tehran. But the plan to take the matter to the Security Council was stymied after Britain, France, and Germany pushed to give Iran until the end of this month to clarify inspectors' remaining questions about whether its enrichment activities were intended to make nuclear weapons.
In an interview published yesterday, the American undersecretary of state for arms control and international security, John Bolton, told the German newspaper Welt Am Sonntag that for now, America was not prepared to take military action against Iranian centrifuges, but he stressed that America had not ruled it out.
Mr. Bolton also criticized the German government for sending a trade mission last week to Tehran. "I can only speak from the American perspective," he said. "We do not trade with countries that seek to breach international nuclear agreements."
The tensions over the Iranian nuclear program come as exile organizations report a new round of clashes between the government and protesters. The Student Movement Coordination Committee for Democracy in Iran reports that protests over the weekend turned violent in Tehran, Esfahan, Hamadan, Ardebil, Shiraz, Kermanshah, Ahwaz, Falavarjan, Oroomiah, and Yazd, in response to firing by Iranian militiamen at protests last week. The latest unrest was sparked in part by the collapse of a state fund for the veterans of foreign wars.
