Annan warns against escalation in Iran nuclear dispute
AFP
WASHINGTON
Petroleumworld.com 02 14 06
UN Secretary General Kofi Annan urged Iran Monday to take steps
by March to enable talks on its nuclear program to resume and
warned against actions that might escalate its tense dispute with
the West.
"We need to be able to work to resolve it, and I hope there
will be no steps taken to escalate the situation," Annan
said as he met at the White House with US President George W.
Bush.
Annan said he hoped Iran would take steps before the UN watchdog
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) meets in Vienna next
month to decide whether to recommend UN Security Council action.
He urged Iran to "indicate that negotiations are not dead
and both sides can come back to the table and find a way out of
this crisis."
Washington accuses Tehran of using a civilian nuclear program
as cover for
trying to develop atomic weapons. Iran denies the charge.
Iran has restarted uranium enrichment work by putting its feedstock
gas into centrifuges, defying the West with a program that could
make nuclear reactor fuel or atom bomb material, diplomats told
AFP Monday.
It came as Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad insisted his
country was not worried about possible sanctions and Tehran said
talks in Moscow aimed at finding a compromise to the long-running
international standoff would not go ahead as planned later this
week.
Uranium enrichment is seen as a red line by the United States
and European Union in the dispute over Iran's nuclear program,
as it is crucial to making atomic weapons.
Putting uranium hexafluoride (UF6) gas into centrifuges, which
distill out enriched uranium, is a major escalation by Iran, and
comes amid threats by the Islamic republic to withdraw from the
nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
AFP
02/13/06
Copyright
© 2006 AFP. All rights reserved
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