Rice Says Iran Is `Playing Games' on Nuclear Negotiations
Perhaps, but US is looking for a bigger fight to hide the truth. They can't save their face, so they'll put ALL our a**'s on the line.
April 30 (Bloomberg) -- Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Iran is ``playing games'' in its latest offer to negotiate on uranium enrichment, and the U.S. will continue pressing for possible sanctions at the United Nations.
``Every time they get close to a Security Council decision, there is some effort to say, `oh, no, we really were in fact interested in that proposal that we rejected just a few weeks ago,''' Rice said today on ABC's ``This Week'' program. ``If they're not playing games, they should come clean; they should stop the enrichment.''
Iran's government is willing to negotiate on whether it would be allowed to undertake ``large-scale'' enrichment of uranium, Hamid Reza Asefi, a spokesman for Iran's Foreign Ministry, told reporters in Tehran. He added that Iranian nuclear research is ``irreversible.''
The UN's International Atomic Energy Agency told the Security Council April 28 that Iran had successfully enriched uranium and was stonewalling inspectors' efforts to determine whether the program is intended for the production of nuclear weapons. The assessment sets the stage for the Security Council to consider imposing sanctions on Iran, a step sought by President George W. Bush's administration.
While Iran defied a UN demand to halt enrichment efforts, Asefi said the government is ``eager'' to negotiate a solution to the standoff. He said a Russian proposal to handle enrichment of fuel for nuclear power reactors outside Iran is ``still on the table.'' Iran wants the Security Council to hand the dispute back to the IAEA.
Security Council
Rice said Iran's effort to keep the matter out of the Security Council suggests `` they are indeed somewhat concerned that the Security Council might move to the kinds of measures that could further isolate Iran.''
The U.S. will continue pressing for a resolution under Chapter 7 of the UN charter, which ``compels behavior from a member state,'' she said. That step provides for economic and diplomatic sanctions as well as possible use of military force. China and Russian, each of which has a veto in the Security Council, have said they oppose sanctions.
``The international community is going to face a choice just as Iran faces a choice,'' she said in a separate interview on CBS's ``Face the Nation'' program. ``Are we going to continue to allow the will of the international community to be defied?''
A somewhat different view of the Iranian position was offered by her immediate predecessor, former Secretary of State Colin Powell. He said in an interview in London today that the Iranian government appears to be ready to defy the U.S. and the UN.
Signs of Defiance
The Iranians `have looked at this very carefully,'' Powell said on the U.K.'s ITV network, and ``they've decided to go forward, even in the face of potential sanctions, which suggests to me that they have pretty much decided that they can accept whatever sanctions are coming their way.''
Iran has said the international community must acknowledge its right to enrich uranium. Russia's proposal will only succeed if Iran's right to nuclear energy is ``officially accepted'' by the international community, Asefi said April 23.
Iran bases its claim on Article 4 of the Treaty on the Non- Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, of which it is a signatory. That article says it is a nation's ``inalienable right'' to develop, research, produce and use nuclear energy, provided it is for ``peaceful purposes.''
The U.S. has been ``very clear'' that it will support an Iranian civilian nuclear power program with the restrictions proposed by Russia and the European Union to prevent Iran from enriching uranium on its own soil, Rice, 51, said.
The IAEA says there are gaps in its knowledge about Iran's nuclear program and is unable to provide confirmation that the country's activities do not have a military purpose. In its April 28 report, the UN nuclear watchdog said it couldn't rule out that Iran may have obtained plutonium, which can be used in nuclear weapons, from abroad.
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