Posted on 04/13/2005 10:01:39 AM PDT by DoctorZIn
Top News Story
Chirac pushes EU to drop hard line on Iran-diplomats
Excerpt:13 Apr 2005 12:36:47 GMT
Source: Reuters
By Louis Charbonneau
VIENNA, April 13 (Reuters) - French President Jacques Chirac has been pushing the EU to drop its refusal to consider letting Iran enrich uranium, despite U.S. and European fears Iran could use enrichment technology for weapons, EU diplomats say.
Sharing U.S. suspicions that Iran may have atom bomb ambitions, the European Union's three biggest powers -- France, Britain and Germany -- have demanded Iran give up its nuclear fuel programme in exchange for economic and political benefits.
Iran says it has no interest in the bomb and wants nuclear power plants to meet booming demand for electricity. Tehran has frozen its enrichment programme, but refuses to permanently give up what it sees as a sovereign right to produce low-enriched uranium fuel for its nuclear power programme.
The Iran-EU talks had been deadlocked over the issue of "objective guarantees" that Iran's atomic programme will not be used to make weapons, with the Europeans insisting that the only acceptable guarantee was a permanent cessation of enrichment.
But the talks took a new turn last month when negotiators from the EU's "big three" (EU3) and the office of EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana agreed in Paris to consider an Iranian proposal that it keep a small-scale enrichment programme that would be closely monitored by the U.N. nuclear watchdog.
Several diplomats said this shift -- which came just after Washington bolstered the EU position by offering its own incentives if Tehran scrapped enrichment -- was mainly the result of pressure by Chirac, who pushed the French Foreign Ministry to drop its refusal to consider Iran's plan.
"Jacques Chirac ... is the one who's taking the Iranian proposal under consideration," said an EU3 diplomat, adding the French president had the final say on foreign policy matters.
NUCLEAR PROGRAMME
French Foreign Ministry spokesman Jean-Baptiste Mattei denied there was any split between Chirac and the Foreign Ministry on the Iranian nuclear programme. "On the Iran dossier, there's one, and only one French position," Mattei said.
Other EU3 diplomats confirmed Chirac had urged his negotiators to consider Iran's proposal it be allowed to have an enrichment plant with 3,000 centrifuges -- which could produce enough highly enriched uranium for one bomb per year.
"Chirac seems to have taken things a bit further forward than everyone else, but his comments do not really represent the official French position on objective guarantees," one said.
"I think it says more about the internal machinations in Paris than anything else," the EU3 diplomat added.
One diplomat close to the EU-Iran talks said the decision to consider Iran's proposal was partly "diplomatic politeness".
But diplomats said it was also a way of avoiding positions that could undermine moderate presidential candidates favouring increased engagement with the West in Iran's June 17 election.
"We don't want to do anything before June," a diplomat said.
When the EU-Iran talks began in January, the EU3 unanimously opposed the idea of Iran keeping its enrichment programme, which Tehran had concealed from the United Nations for nearly two decades.
- Pravda is reporting the USA is interested in establishing mobile army bases on the territory of Azerbaijan, which is stipulated in the plan to re-deploy US troops in Europe and Asia.
- Reuters is reporting that Iran denied Wednesday a report that it may have secretly moved some sensitive nuclear material from a site being monitored by the U.N.'s atomic watchdog.
- IranMania reports that Iran has finally admitted that some of its dissidents could be wrongfully imprisoned.
- SMCCDI reports that residents of an Iranian city said a farewell to outgoing President Khatami and his reforms.
- New York Times reports that Israeli Prime Minister Sharon showed President Bush evidence that Iran was near "a point of no return" in learning how to develop a weapon.
- FrontPageMagazine.com reports on an Iranian TV series in which an American Officer interrogates, frames and arrests innocent Iranians.
- And finally, the Washington Post claims Iran has pulled out the vast majority of its Revolutionary Guards in Lebanon.
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Be ironic if Paris is nuked first.
My bet is on London, though.
I would think Israel, but they know that Israeli would then kill every Shiite in the world.
Chirac was very instrumental in helping Saddam build his nuke facility. He's done as much for nuclear proliferation as Pakistan's Khan.
"an Iranian proposal that it keep a small-scale enrichment programme that would be closely monitored by the U.N. nuclear watchdog."
Let them watch, kick them out later when done.
Simple, isn't it?
Where there's money to be made dealing with a Muslim dictatorship, Chirac will be first in line. Well-heeled clients can even have his wife, daughters, and granddaughters thrown in extra.
How stupid is this guy? Rhetorical question for sure, but, how could somebody in charge of their country's security be in favor of letting a known terrorist state enrich uranium? Maybe his last name was Al-Chirac at one time?
Europe getting bombed first? What a quirky world we'd be living in if THAT happened.
Well, bullies attack the weakest on the schoolyard.
They don't go attack the nice --- but tough --- kid.
To those with the bully mentality like the wee-penised "men" that run Iran, Europe's appeasement makes them seem weak (because it is weak).
Attack USA or Israel --- get killed.
Attack Europe --- get what you want.
Europe gets bombed - we get blamed.
Actually, I was just thinking that we should announce that it's OK for Iran to build a bomb. We've developed an anti-missile shield for Israel, but unfortuantely, when it knocks them out of the air, they would land in france. Since Chirac is unworried about it, there's no problem. It'll probably take a decade or two for us to fix the problems though :o)
April 13, 2005
Yesterday, Israeli Gen. Yoav Gallant brought satellite surveillance photographs of Iranian nuclear installations to Crawford, Texas, to impress upon the president and the vice president that the threat of an Iranian nuclear bomb was at hand. The point of the surveillance show-and-tell was to impress upon Bush and Cheney how much the nuclear facilities in Iran have developed since 2002, reaching now what Prime Minister Sharon described as an "advanced stage."
The administration did not have to wait for Israeli intelligence to show him those photographs. Bush and Cheney could simply have read "Atomic Iran," in which surveillance photographs of multiple Iranian nuclear facilities are printed and discussed in detail, making the exact same point.
Israeli news sources are reporting on Wednesday morning that Sharon impressed upon the U.S. administration the urgency of the situation and danger of relying upon a time-consuming process of European negotiations to resolve the coming crisis. While the Europeans and the Iranians talk in fancy European settings, Sharon argued, the Iranians are using the time to press forward their clandestine nuclear weapons program.
Everyday, it seems we get new revelations coming out of Iran – revelations that confirm Sharon's argument. On Tuesday, as the meetings between Sharon and Bush were taking place, there was an international news bulletin flashed from Reuters reporting that the International Agency for Atomic Energy – the United Nations "watchdog" supposedly on the case – now suspects that Iran is stashing away a secret cache of uranium. Unnamed European diplomats leaked to the news service disclosures that enriched uranium inventories from important Iranian nuclear sites did not match up. Reuters went worldwide with the report that significant amounts of uranium hexafluoride gas had been diverted from the uranium enrichment facility in Isfahan.
According to reports now surfacing, Sharon pressed the administration to realize that Iran had not stopped enriching uranium to show good faith in the negotiations with the Europeans, but simply because of technical problems. If the Europeans end up allowing Iran to continue uranium enrichment efforts, the Israeli leaders argued we are headed toward a frightening international crisis where Iran could proceed as rapidly as possible toward uranium enrichment under whatever exemptions are allowed, planning to withdraw from the commitments it made to the Europeans once the Iranian nuclear scientists were technically ready to go full speed ahead with the accelerated production of fissionable material.
From reports surfacing this morning, Iran was the major subject of discussion, overshadowing the issue of Israeli withdrawal of settlements. Sharon argued that the United States should pressure the Europeans to move the Iranian case to the U.N. Security Council as quickly as possible. The Israelis urged the president and vice president to set a clear timetable to halt the Iranian nuclear weapons push and to prepare for the coming crisis by intensifying pressure on Iran to halt its nuclear weapons program.
The nature of the talks could not be more alarming. Reading between the lines, Israel is pleading with the president to get rid of his apparent "case of the slows" that developed after he and Secretary of State Rice took their recent trips to Europe.
The Israelis have no illusion that the process of European negotiation will produce anything but more lies by the mullahs. Iran is following the path so clearly laid out by North Korea. The Israelis are begging President Bush and Vice President Cheney to avoid being tricked by Iran, the same way Kim Jong-Il made fools out of President Clinton and Secretary of State Albright. Iran's argument that they only want nuclear fuel for peaceful purposes is as transparently a lie as were the identical statements made by North Korea during the Clinton administration.
Israel cannot afford for the world to be wrong with Iran. The mullahs have a history of funding Hezbollah and working with Hamas to launch suicide bombing attacks against Israel. The mullahs even now preach "Death to Israel" and "Death to America."
Prime Minister Sharon is resolved not to wake up one morning and find out Iran has an atomic bomb by seeing the mushroom cloud over Tel Aviv. President Bush has already had the experience of being caught flatfooted when the 9-11 terrorists flew airplanes into the World Trade Center. He and Vice President Cheney should think hard about the reality of an atomic 9-11. None of us can afford awakening up to that surprise.
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=43773
BUMP
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