/ 15 September 2005

European leaders hold nuclear talks with Iran

The leaders of Britain, France and Germany are meeting the new Iranian president today in an attempt to avoid referring Iran to the United Nations security council over its nuclear activities.

Iran’s hardline President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, meets the leaders to discuss ways of avoiding possible sanctions after Iran resumed its uranium enrichment programme last month.

The meeting is part of the three-day UN summit being held in New York. A key aim of the summit is to take action to achieve the UN Millennium Development Goals, a set of eight targets intended to reduce global poverty and disease by 2015.

The UN meeting will also decide ways in which to reform the institution, but several member states — most notably the US — have opposed many of the sweeping changes proposed and instead insisted on a ”watered-down” version of the body’s final declaration.

George Bush, the US President, has held a series of one-to-one meetings with other world leaders to try to diplomatically isolate Iran over its nuclear activities.

Ahmadinejad is also holding talks with other leaders in an effort to win support for Iran’s programme.

Analysts say the Iranian nuclear programme is the most important issue being discussed alongside the official aims of the summit.

Thursday’s talks come ahead of a meeting of International Atomic Energy Agency – the UN’s nuclear watchdog — on Monday. The meeting will decide whether to refer Iran to the security council for possible sanctions.

On Wednesday, the French Prime Minister, Dominique De Villepin, threatened Iran with referral to the security council. ”In the nuclear sphere, we have put our trust in the IAEA where there are rights to uphold and duties to enforce,” he told a security council meeting.

”If a state fails in its obligations under the [nuclear] non-proliferation treaty, it is legitimate, once dialogue has been exhausted, to refer it to the security council.”

However, Ahmadinejad insists Iran has a right to resume its nuclear programme, and reportedly said before leaving for the summit: ”All nations should be allowed to use different kinds of energies, including nuclear.”

He is due to address the summit on Thursday afternoon — his first major international appearance since being elected in June.

Tehran suspended its nuclear programme in November 2004 and began talks with Britain, France and Germany aimed on using imported low-enriched nuclear fuel for its reactors instead.

However, work last month restarted at the processing plant in Isfahan, south of Tehran, prompting a flurry of proposals from the troika designed to halt Iran’s enrichment activities.

Tehran has always maintained that it wants to enrich uranium for use as fuel in its nuclear power plants. However, the Europeans and Washington suspect it of wanting to continue the enrichment process in an effort to produce a nuclear bomb.

At the opening assembly of the summit on Wednesday, the UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan, criticised states that had blocked plans for reform and said they had allowed ”posturing to get in the way of results”. – Guardian Unlimited Â