Thursday, March 30, 2006

Phone Calls

After three weeks of haggling, many Western diplomats had just about given up hope of convincing Moscow and Beijing to sign onto a U.N. Security Council statement pressing Iran to suspend its suspect nuclear activities, comply with international nonproliferation rules and return to negotiations with the Europeans.
But in the end, it took U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice personally working the phones, and ceding a little ground, to seal the deal — which gave Iran 30 days to suspend its uranium enrichment activities or face as yet unspecified consequences. In the last several days, Rice has spoken to her counterpart, Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov, on a number of occasions, to try and bridge the gap. On the last phone call Wednesday morning, state department officials said, Rice agreed to ask the British to strike a line from their draft statement suggesting that Iran’s rogue behavior might constitute a "threat to international peace and security."
While that may seem like mere semantics, in diplomatic parlance the phrase has a very specific — and to the Russians ominous — meaning; it echoes the U.N. charter and, in Lavrov's mind, could potentially serve as a precedent for subjecting Iran to punitive economic and political sanctions, which the U.S. supports and Russia adamantly opposes.
Lavrov, however, also made concessions. The British draft called for Mohamed El Baradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, to report to the Security Council on Iran’s compliance or lack thereof. The Russians wanted El Baradei to report to the IAEA, but Rice and European officials said this would kick the Iran problem out of the Security Council and back to a weaker agency. The compromise, hammered out by Rice and Lavrov, called for El Baradei to report to both the Security Council and the IAEA.
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Iran's Ready for Talks

Iran’s Foreign Minister Mounachehr Mottaki said on Thursday.
“The recent proposal made by Iraqi leaders for Iran to talk with the US about issues relating to Iraq: we look on this proposal as an opportunity to help the Iraqi nation,” Mottaki told journalists in Geneva. “These negotiations will be limited only to Iraq. The venue, the team of negotiators and the time is yet to be finalised,” he added.
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Oil at 66$

“There’s got to be a crunch point over Iran,” Geoff Pyne, an independent oil analyst, said, adding “At the end of the day Iran is intent on uranium enrichment and the West won’t allow it.”
US crude stood at $66.6 a barrel, up 13 cents. London Brent crude was up 50 cents at $66.1 a barrel. The UN Security Council unanimously adopted a ’presidential statement’ late on Wednesday calling on Iran to freeze its uranium enrichment work.
But as the five permanent Security Council members and Germany met in Berlin to discuss their next step on Thursday, Iran’s ambassador to the UN atomic agency ruled out complying. Oil prices touched their highest point since February 2. In real terms oil is at levels unseen for a quarter of a century.
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India is not Iran, US counters Germans

The US leapt to India’s defence after German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said the Indian civil nuclear energy deal “was not helpful” given that it came in the midst of talks on curbing Iran’s nuclear ambitions. “We would differ with anybody who tries to make any comparisons between the behaviour of Iran and the behaviour of India,” US State Department Spokesman Sean McCormack told a press conference on Wednesday where the issue reared its head.
“At the end of the day, India has been a responsible member of the international community when it comes to issues of nonproliferation. Iran, on the other hand, has abrogated its treaty obligations not to seek to develop a nuclear weapon and continually lied to the international community about that,” he added.
According to reports, Steinmeier told the German daily Handelsblatt; “There is no question that in light of the continuing talks over the Iranian nuclear programme, the timing of the American-Indian agreement was not helpful.” However, the German minister said such agreements could draw countries like India into the fold of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
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Rice is all over the Place

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice arrived late Thursday afternoon in Paris, where she is to talk with French President Jacques Chirac, as part of a lightning tour of European capitals for consultations on Iran.
Topics surrounding Iran, the Mideast and Lebanon would be at the center of their talks, which will also cover the situation in Belarus, according to the French Foreign Ministry.
The visit followed a stop in Berlin, where Rice talked with her counterparts from the other permanent member countries (Britain, China, France and Russia) of the United Nations Security Council and Germany over Iran's nuclear program.
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1 comments:

Pax said...

Oil at $66.6? Maybe I should take the Bible a little more seriously.

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