51 PAIVAND Vol. 16 Issue 953 Friday May 7, 2010
Iran welcomes Brazil mediation over nuclear issue
AP- Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has agreed “in principle” to a Brazilian role in breaking the deadlock over a U.N.-backed nuclear fuel swap with the West. Under the U.N. plan first put forward in 2009, Western powers would send nuclear fuel rods to a Tehran reactor in exchange for Iran’s stock of lower-level enriched uranium. The U.S. and its allies fear Iran’s disputed nuclear program aims to build nuclear weapons, and view the swap as a way to curb Tehran’s capacity to do so. Iran, which insists its nuclear program only aims to generate electricity, rejected the original exchange proposal. At the same time, the country’s leaders have worked to keep the offer on the table, proposing variations, though without accepting the terms set in the U.N. proposal.
A statement posted on Ahmadinejad’s website late Tuesday said during a telephone conversation with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, the Iranian president “announced his agreement in principle” to Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s mediation proposal. However, a spokesman for Brazil’s Foreign Ministry said Wednesday Brasilia had not made an official offer to mediate yet, but that Brazil was ready to help with talks any way it can. During a trip to Tehran last week, Brazil’s foreign minister said that an exchange of fuel between Iran and the West could take place in Brazil, if his country was asked to host the exchange. An emerging world player, Brazil has urged Western nations
to negotiate a fair solution with Iran over its nuclear program. It has also called on Tehran to provide guarantees that its nuclear program has no military ambitions in return for enjoying its right to have peaceful nuclear technology. Under the original U.N. proposal, Iran was to send 2,420
Brazil denies Iran’s talk of nuclear swap plan AFP-Brazil on Wednesday denied assertions from Iran that it had offered an alternative plan for a uranium swap acceptable to Tehran and aimed at breaking a international deadlock over Iran’s nuclear program. A Brazilian foreign ministry spokesman told AFP that no such plan had been proposed during a visit to Tehran last month by Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Amorim. “We were informed that an official Iranian government website mentioned President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad supported a Brazilian ‘program’. But there was no presentation of a formal program during the foreign minister’s visit,” the spokesman said. He added that the ministry understood that “President Ahmadinejad backs Brazil’s vision of maintaining channels for dialogue. Minister Amorim responded to a question in a press conference in Tehran and said that Brazil stood ready to analyze any possibility.”
Brazil’s denial deflated a statement on the Iranian website president.ir, which said Ahmadinejad discussed a Brazilian proposal in a telephone conversation with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on Tuesday. “The main issue of talks between Ahmadinejad and Chavez was the Brazilian president’s proposal regarding the nuclear fuel swap and Ahmadinejad declared his basic approval to this proposal,” the website said. The website did not give details about a Brazilian proposal. The only clues to what it might have been referring to was a report carried by Iran’s official news agency IRNA on April 27 in which Amorim was quoted saying Brazil could host a fuel swap deal if asked by Tehran. “As of now there is no proposal, but if we receive such a proposal, it could be examined,” Amorim said, according to IRNA. He was also quoted as saying that Brazil could act as a “political guarantor” for the deal.
Currently, Iran and Western powers, led by the United States, are at an impasse over a a UNdrafted nuclear fuel swap deal for Tehran, which envisages supplying Iran with nuclear fuel in exchange for its low-enriched uranium stocks. The deal stalled after Iran insisted the two materials be exchanged simultaneously within its borders -- a condition rejected by world powers which accuse Iran of masking a weapons drive under the guise of what Tehran says is a purely civilian atomic program. Brazil, a rotating UN Security Council member, is resisting the US-led push for UN sanctions against Iran to push it back into negotiations. The Brazilian foreign ministry spokesman said Brazil “remains ready to continue acting as a dialogue facilitator” in the stand-off. Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva is to fly to Iran at the end of next week to meet Ahmadinejad.
France refuses to extradite Iranian engineer to US AFP- A French court on Wednesday turned down a US request to extradite an Iranian engineer accused of buying electronic parts and exporting them illegally to Iran for use by the military. The decision to release Majid Kakavand capped more than a year of legal wrangling in a case that had broad diplomatic implications as France pressed for the release of a French academic held in Tehran. The Paris appeals court, which has the authority to rule on extradition requests, found that “there are no grounds to favourably receive this extradition request from the United States.” Kakavand, who was arrested at Paris airport on March 20 last year following a holiday in France, said he planned to fly home as soon as possible and return to his “normal life”. “The Americans destroyed my life and my personality and made a very bad image of me and now everybody can understand that it was not true,” the 37-year-old engineer told AFP after the ruling.
“With these baseless accusations, the Americans tried to mislead the French judiciary system.” Kakavand’s case came before the courts as France seeks the release from Iran of 24-yearold French academic Clotilde Reiss, who has been tried on charges of acting against Iranian national security. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had linked Reiss’s release to the fate of Iranians held in French jails but President Nicolas Sarkozy had flatly responded that there would be no such swap. Another Iranian, Ali Vakili Rad, convicted of the 1991 murder of the deposed shah’s
last prime minister, Shapour Bakhtiar, is in France awaiting a decision on a parole request. France has also been a vocal critic of Iran’s nuclear programme, pressing calls for Tehran to address allegations that it is secretly developing nuclear weapons. Kakavand said he did not see a link between his fate and that of Clotilde Reiss. “The case of Miss Reiss in Iran is quite different,” he said. US justice officials accused Kakavand of buying electronic components and measurement instruments through a Malaysian company and exporting them to Iran via Malaysia between 2006 and 2008.
pounds (1,100 kilograms) of low-enriched uranium abroad, where it would be further enriched to 20 percent and converted into fuel rods, which would then be returned to Iran. Sending its low-enriched uranium abroad would leave Iran with insufficient stocks to enrich further to weaponsgrade level. Tehran needs the fuel rods to power a research reactor in the Iranian capital that makes nuclear isotopes needed for medical purposes. Once converted into rods, uranium can no longer be used for making weapons. Iran has made several counteroffers to the West, including one to swap smaller batches of Iran’s low-enriched uranium. The U.S. and its allies are pushing for tougher sanctions in the Security Council over Tehran’s refusal to halt uranium enrichment — a process that can lead to nuclear weapon making. Brazil, which is currently a non-permanent member of the Security Council, opposes a new round of sanctions, insisting that only talks will resolve the impasse. On Monday at the U.N., Brazil’s foreign minister told his Iranian counterpart, Manouchehr Mottaki, that Iran needs to have more “flexibility” in nuclear talks, according to the privately run Agencia Estado news agency. The technology was bought from firms in New Jersey, Alabama and California and shipped to the Iran Electronics Industry (IEI) firm, which came under an EU trade ban in 2008. Washington argued that Kakavand had purchased sensitive dual-use technology that could be used for military purposes and violated export laws by failing to seek a special license to ship them to Iran. France however does not have the same export requirements for Iran and the IEI company that received the orders came under a trading ban after Kakavand had made his transactions, French officials said. Last month, experts from the French arms agency DGA told the court that the electronics components purchased by Kakavand could not be considered potentially dangerous. French prosecutors had told the appeals court that they opposed extradition, arguing that Kakavand’s offences were not punishable in France at the time when they were committed. The case dragged out in court over months with hearings repeatedly postponed as judges sought more time to examine US documents supporting the extradition request.
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Iran begins new military maneuvers in Persian Gulf AP-Iran on Wednesday kicked off new war games and military maneuvers in the strategic Persian Gulf waters, the country’s second military show of force in less than a month. The exercises reflect Iran’s desire to flex its military muscle at a time of a deepening standoff with the West over Tehran’s controversial nuclear program. The war games, held annually since 2006, also act as a warning, should U.S. or Israel consider a military strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities. The new maneuvers, dubbed “Velayat 89,” are to last eight days in the Strait of Hormuz and the Sea of Oman and cover about 97,000 square miles (250,000 square kilometers) of Iranian territorial waters, reported state TV. In late April, Iran’s Revolutionary Guard held fiveday maneuvers in the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz. Iran’s leaders have in the past said that if attacked, the country would respond by shutting off the Strait of Hormuz, the mouth of the Gulf through which around 40 percent of the world’s oil and gas supplies passes, as well as by attacking American bases in the Gulf. Navy chief Adm. Habibollah Sayyari was quoted by the TV as saying Wednesday that Iran’s Navy, backed by the air force, will “show its might” in
the latest exercise. The exercise comes as the Obama administration is lobbying hard at the U.N. Security Council for tougher punishment of Iran over its refusal to suspend uranium enrichment, a process that can produce either a warhead or fuel for a nuclear reactor. The West accuses Iran of seeking to build a weapon, a claim Tehran denies, insisting its nuclear program is only for peaceful purposes, such as power generation. The exercise also comes against the backdrop of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s remarks on the sidelines of a nuclear treaty conference at U.N. headquarters in New York dismissing the threat of further economic penalties for Iran. Ahmadinejad has recently been lobbying China and Russia, the two among the Security Council’s five veto-wielding permanent members that have been reluctant to endorse further sanctions against Iran, and also rotating members such as Uganda and Brazil. As the sole head of state to attend the once-every-fiveyears Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty gathering, Ahmadinejad argued in New York that any new sanctions would mean President Barack Obama has given up on his campaign to engage Iran diplomatically.
US jokes it finds no bin Laden in State Department AFP- The US State Department, after hearing Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad say Osama bin Laden was in Washington, joked Wednesday it found no trace of him despite a thorough search. “We’ve done an intensive search here at the Department of State -- every nook and cranny, every rock -- and we can safely report that Osama bin Laden is not here,” State Department spokesman Philip Crowley said. “You mean Greater Washington, or you just looked at the State Department?” a reporter asked as he played along with the joke from Crowley, the spokesman for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. “Just the confines of the State Department, but it was reported by the president of Iran that he’s here in Washington. That’s news to us,” Crowley said before turning to the news of the day. “And thank you for laughing,” he said, smiling broadly. In an interview earlier with ABC television, Ahmadinejad denied recent press reports that Osama bin Laden is in Tehran and insisted that the Al-Qaeda leader is, in fact, in the US capital. “Rest assured that he’s in Washington. I think there’s a high chance he’s there,” the Iranian leader said. Without backing up the claim, the Iranian leader said he had “heard” the bin Laden was in the US capital. “Yes, I did. He’s there. Because he was a previous partner of Mr. Bush,” he said referring to former president George W. Bush. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad also accused
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Wednesday of seeking to provoke a “clash” with Tehran over its nuclear program. “Mrs. Clinton is interested in speedily moving relations with Iran to the point of a clash,” Ahmadinejad told ABC television in an interview, saying she was “constantly taking measures” against his government. “Both the positions and the actions that Mrs. Clinton is taking violates the rights of Iran over the nuclear issue. It’s quite clear and it doesn’t need explanation.” Ahmadinejad went on to say he felt Clinton “opposed” his country, while US President Barack Obama did not. “Based on the information we possess, Mr. Obama does not have such an opinion, but there’s a lot of pressure going around,” the Iranian leader told ABC. Ahmadinejad made even stronger comments earlier this week, calling Clinton “an enemy” of Tehran. “Mrs. Clinton is an enemy of Iran -- it’s clear from the position she takes,” he told the PBS television network in an interview recorded on May 3.