JACK STRAW LEFT TEHRAN EMPTY HANDS
TEHRAN 30 June (IPS) British Foreign Affairs Minister Jack Straw ended his fourth visit to Tehran empty hands, as Iran told him bluntly that it was not going to sign any new protocols with the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) "unless it receives concessions from the international community".
Top of Straw's agenda was international concern over Iran's nuclear weapons
program, the regime's brutal treatment of student’s-led popular protest
movement of the last two weeks, Iran’s support for international terrorism,
most particularly the Palestinian groups opposed to peace with Israel, as well
as the future of relations between the Islamic Republic and the European Union
protestors.
"When Iran is going to take positive steps, it is our right to expect positive steps from others", Iranian Foreign Affairs Minister Kamal Kharazi said during a joint press conference with his British guest.
Signing new protocols with the Non Proliferation Treaty (NTP), which Iran has already signed, would mean allowing more intrusive, surprise visits at any time by the IAEA weapons to suspicious Iranian nuclear facilities.
Mr. Straw had called on Iran before landing in Tehran to agree by September to nuclear inspectors conducting new and more intensive investigations into its alleged weapons programme.
Although Mr Straw insisted September should not be interpreted as a deadline, it increases the pressure on Iran. Neither the US nor Britain has set a timetable before.
"I don't see why they can't sign up by September", the Foreign Secretary said, suggesting however that if Iran failed to comply with the additional IAEA requirements for more intrusive inspections, its plans for a trade agreement with the European Union could face problems.
On its 16 June meeting, the IAEA Board of Directors, despite American pressures, had given the Islamic Republic until September to come out signing the additional NPT protocols. However, Iran, while expressing satisfaction at the decision, described by observers as a "compromise statement", said it would "consider" the proposal.
But both Mr Kharazzi and President Mohammad Khatami, who also received the British top diplomat, told him that Iran had nothing to hide and was ready to cooperate, but conditioned that if countries wanted it to meet new obligations, those countries would have to spell out the consequences of these obligations and what new obligations they themselves would take on.
The United States, Britain and Israel are concerned that the Islamic Republic might use nuclear facilities it is building up with the help of Russia for producing electricity for producing atomic bombs, a charge that both Tehran and Moscow rejects vehemently and insists that they would continue with their nuclear cooperation.
As The British Foreign Secretary was living Tehran for Kabol, Mr. Qolamreza Aqazadeh, Head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organisation was meeting in Moscow with Russian counterparts, discussing plans for building more nuclear-based power stations.
But striking a more conciliatory tone, Hojjatoleslam Hassan Rohani, the influential Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, informed Mr. Straw that Iran would invite the IAEA’ Chief Mohammad ElBaradei for "talks to remove technical problems", the official Iranian news agency IRNA reported on Monday.
In Vienna, the IAEA said ElBaradei would accept the invitation, although no date had yet been set.
Mr Straw coupled his call for Iran to sign with a threat that non-compliance could jeopardise an EU Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA) currently being negotiated with Iran.
Mr. Kharrazi also expressed "deep dissatisfaction" with remarks by Prime Minister Tony Blair purportedly supporting the anti-government demonstrators in Iran, saying: "I would expect him to make a distinction between peaceful students, who naturally have a right to demonstrate, and vandals who destroy public property".
Blair's remarks, protested Straw during the press conference, had been wrongly interpreted: "The UK's position is to support the right of free and peaceful assembly and not in any sense a gratuitous act of interference in Iran's affairs".
Iranian newspapers yesterday heavily criticised the US and Britain on the nuclear issue. "Jomhoori Eslami" newspaper, that belongs to Iran’s leader Ayatollah Ali Khameneh’i, in a front-page editorial, described Mr Straw as "a politically corrupt person".
"Why talking with those who interfere (in Iran’s interior affairs). British rulers, because they are very idiots, cannot understand that revolutionary Iran has closed the road to colonialists and exploiters. The British Prime Minister is a person that even British MPs considers him as an American poodle", the paper wrote just before the arrival of Mr. Straw, hinting at what he could expect from his Iranian visit.
Also on the Mr. Straw’s agenda was the fate of al-Qa’eda suspects believed to be held in Iran. "We have some ideas of who they have", Mr Straw said, implying the report about the presence in Iran of some of the Organisation’s top ranking officials, first published by "Iran Press Service", was correct.
Among those thought to be held in Iran are the Egyptian Dr. Eyman al Zawaheri, Osama Ben Laden’s right hand man, Sa’ad Ben Laden, Osama’s elder son, thought to have taken over his father; Soleiman Abu Ghaith, al-Qa’eda’s spokesman, and Saif al-Adil, the organisation's head of security.
Mr Kharazzi confirmed that some al-Qa’eda suspects were being questioned, but refused to say how many or give their identities.
On the question of the Middle East and Iran’s support for hard line Palestinian groups, Kharazi observed that the international community was displaying "double standards" in its treatment of the Palestinians.
"The United States fully support Israel while the Palestinians are fighting with empty hands", he noted, adding that Iran was not "optimistic" about the US and EU supported Road Map, "because, he said, "Israel and Sharon do not believe in peace".
Marking his government’s difference with Washington over the Islamic Republic, considers by the Bush Administration as an "evil State", Mr. Straw had told the BBC it was quite wrong to draw comparisons between political systems or the regional threats posed by Iran and Saddam's Iraq.
"No one," he intoned, "should ever compare Iran with Iraq in terms of their political systems or their danger", adding he could not imagine any circumstances in which Britain would attack Iran.
"Straw’s message to the Iranian rulers was that if you want to survive, you should either change policies or the international community, led by the United States, would do it", commented Dr Mehdi Mozzafari, a professor of International Politics at Copenhagen University, speaking with the Persian service of Radio France International. ENDS IRAN UK 30603