Reuters, United Nations – Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Thursday his country was prepared to negotiate a suspension of its most sensitive nuclear work if it received fair guarantees in talks with major powers, but the United States and many experts reacted skeptically.
Ahmadinejad told a news conference at U.N. headquarters that talks with the European Union on Iran’s nuclear program were on the right track and he hoped no one would try to sabotage them, an apparent reference to Washington.
Asked if Iran would meet a U.N. Security Council demand that it suspend uranium enrichment, which can be used to make fuel for power stations or bombs, he said Tehran was prepared to discuss such a move but gave no timeframe for doing so.
"We have said that under fair conditions and just conditions we will negotiate about it," the president said.
But U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said there was no room for haggling on the key condition set by the six major powers — the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany — for negotiations on a package of economic and technological incentives.
"If they suspend, then the negotiations can begin. It’s as simple as that, I don’t think we need any further conditionality," Rice told reporters.
In a relaxed hour-long joust with reporters, Ahmadinejad avoided saying whether Iran would respect a U.N. arms embargo on Lebanon’s Hizbollah militia and insisted he was not anti-Jewish while denouncing what he called a power-hungry Zionist lobby.
"CONSTRUCTIVE PATH"
EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana has been holding talks with Iran on behalf of the six powers on a formula and a sequence of steps for beginning negotiations.
"We believe those negotiations are moving on the right path. Hopefully others will not disrupt the work — in small ways perhaps. We think it is a constructive path to take," Ahmadinejad said.
While there have been hints at progress in Solana’s talks, this was the most explicit public statement by an Iranian leader that Tehran is considering complying with the key condition for talks on broad cooperation with the West.
After Iran ignored a U.N. deadline to halt enrichment by August 31, the six powers agreed this week to give Solana until early October to reach a deal with Tehran.
If Iran did not agree to suspend enrichment at that point, the six powers would seek U.N. sanctions on Iran, they said.
Critics say Iran is trying to drag out diplomacy, fudge deadlines and split the international community while pressing ahead with uranium enrichment.
"Saying that we are considering, that we are thinking about … aren’t the same thing as actually saying ‘Yes, we are going to do it’ and then … doing it in a verifiable way,’ State Department spokesman Tom Casey said.
The six powers made a comprehensive proposal in June for economic, technological and political cooperation, including supplying a state-of-the-art nuclear reactor, if Iran halted work the West suspects is designed to produce atomic weapons.
Iran responded with a 21-page counter-proposal in late August, evading a clear commitment to suspend enrichment.
Ahmadinejad insisted Iran’s nuclear program was peaceful and fully open to inspection and asked why Washington supported other states in his region known to possess nuclear weapons, an apparent reference to Israel, Pakistan and India.
Building on his U.N. General Assembly speech on Tuesday, he questioned the legitimacy of the Security Council to sit in judgment on others when its own members stockpiled nuclear weapons and were involved in "oppression."
Since major powers had broken commitments to supply Iran with civil nuclear technology in the past, it wanted guarantees that the outcome of negotiations would be enforced this time.
An exiled Iranian dissident who first revealed Tehran’s secret nuclear program in 2002, Alireza Jafarzadeh of the National Council of Resistance, said Ahmadinejad was "a master at making vague statements and building hollow expectations to buy time to continue enrichment while holding off sanctions."