Annan
warns against Iran nuclear 'escalation'
AFP/POOL/File/Matt
Dunham
UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, pictured here in January 2006,
urged Iran for a new round of talks
on its nuclear program to resume and warned against actions that
might escalate its tense dispute with the West
By Olivier Knox
AFP
WASHINGTON
Petroleumworld.com
02 14 06
UN Secretary General Kofi Annan urged Iran Monday to help set
the stage for a new round of talks on its nuclear program by March
and warned against an escalation of Tehran's tense dispute with
the West.
Annan's appeal came after he met here with US President George
W. Bush for talks that also broached peacekeeping in Sudan's troubled
Darfur region, UN reform, and pressure on Hamas to renounce violence
against Israel.
But even as they met, diplomats told AFP that Iran had 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.
While Bush was silent about the dispute with Iran, Annan volunteered:
"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 he hoped Tehran would take steps to show that diplomacy
is "not dead" before the UN nuclear watchdog, the International
Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), meets in Vienna next month to decide
whether to recommend UN Security Council action.
Washington accuses Tehran of using a civilian nuclear program
as cover for trying to develop atomic weapons. Iran denies the
charge.
Meanwhile, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad insisted his
country was not worried about possible sanctions and Tehran said
talks in Moscow aimed at finding an end to the standoff would
not go ahead as planned later this week.
Uranium enrichment is seen as a red line by the United States
and the 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).
Bush and Annan also discussed options for UN peacekeeping in Darfur,
though neither leader mentioned a US military contribution to
such an effort amid warnings from Washington that such talk is
"premature."
"Of course this is an issue where all governments have to
play their role," said Annan, who vowed last week to press
Bush on helping to build such a force to replace a beleaguered
African Union deployment.
"I'm very happy that we have agreed to work together on the
Darfur issue, working with other governments from Europe, from
Asia, and other regions, to ensure that we do have an effective
security presence on the ground," he added.
Bush mentioned his meeting last week with Rebecca Garang, the
widow of Sudanese rebel leader John Garang, and efforts to implement
a January peace deal that ended more than two decades of north-south
civil war, which left some two million people dead and displaced
twice as many from their homes.
"I appreciate the secretary's leadership on that issue,"
the president said.
Annan also urged the militant Palestinian group Hamas to abandon
violence against Israel and recognize that state's right to exist
in the wake of the Islamists' landslide victory in Palestinian
legislative elections.
"I think there is an opportunity here for Hamas to transform
itself into a political party and work with the international
community and the Israeli government," Annan said.
The UN chief pointed to calls by the international "quartet"
comprising the United Nations, United States, Russia and Europe
for Hamas to recognize Israel's right to exist and to disarm.
On UN reform, Bush vowed to keep pushing for overhauling the UN
human rights commission, which Washington says is too-often packed
with countries that violate human rights, and Annan said such
reform needed to be carried out "as soon as possible."
AFP
02 13 06
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