Agence France Presse, LONDON – It is up to Iran to reassure the international community that it really is not pursuing the development of nuclear weapons, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said Monday.
Speaking at a security conference in London, where senior diplomats were holding a closed-door meeting on Iran, Straw underlined the danger of weapons of mass destruction falling into the hands of terrorists.
"This is why the international community’s stand against Iran’s continued non-compliance with its Non-Proliferation Treaty obligations and successive resolutions of the board of governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency is so important," he said.
"The onus is on Iran to act to give the international community confidence that its nuclear programme has exclusive peaceful purposes — confidence, I’m afraid, that has been sorely undermined by its history of concealement and deception."
Britain, France and Germany called last Thursday for the IAEA to refer Iran to the UN Security Council — a step that could lead to sanctions — after Iran moved to end its voluntary moratorium on uranimum enrichment research.
Tehran insists its nuclear intentions are strictly peaceful, but the IAEA declared last September that it had failed to live up to its non-proliferation obligations, amid fears that it secretly intends to build atomic weapons.
Senior diplomats from Britain, France, Germany and the United States were meeting in London on Monday with Chinese and Russian counterparts, hoping to get Beijing and Moscow to back Iran’s referral to the Security Council despite the two nations’ closer trade and energy links with the Islamic republic.
Straw, speaking at the Royal United Services Institute think-tank, said: "It is because of Iran’s failure up to now to bring itself into compliance that we are now considering with our partners in Europe and the permanent five of the Security Council a referral of Iran to the Security Council through an emergency meeting of the IAEA board."
