Pat Dollard | Young Americans

BRUSSELS, Jan 23 (AFP) Jan 23, 2008

Iran’s top nuclear negotiatior on Wednesday dismissed moves by international powers on a new UN resolution over Tehran’s nuclear programme as part of an “illegal” strategy.

“This whole process is illegal,” negotiator Saeed Jalili said during a visit to Brussels, stressing that the last report by the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and a recent US report showed that there was “no proof of any diversion” from the country’s civil nuclear energy programme for military purposes.

Jalili’s visit to Brussels came a day after the five permanent UN Security Council members — Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States — plus Germany agreed on the text of a new resolution on Iran over its nuclear programme.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Tehran played down the impact of any future Security Council resolution on the country’s controversial nuclear programme after world powers said they had agreed on a new UN measure.

“They should know that such illegal behaviour will be ineffective against the will of the Iranian people,” state television quoted Ahmadinejad as saying.

Jalili was due to meet EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana in Brussels later in the day, but Tehran’s reaction to the international moves Tuesday left little hope of major progress in the latest of a series of meetings between the two men.

The last time he and Solana met was late November in London, a month after a meeting in Rome.

After the London talks the EU foreign policy chief — who negotiates with Iran on behalf of the big six powers — said then that he was “disappointed” after failing to make a breakthrough in the negotiations.

Solana is seeking to convince Iran to agree to suspend its uranium enrichment activities, offering as an incentive huge cooperation with the West, amid fears the Islamic republic could try to produce an atomic bomb.

The new UN resolution agreed by the major powers in Berlin on Tuesday will be presented to the full Security Council “in the coming weeks,” German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said.

A senior US official in Berlin said the new resolution “increases the severity of the sanctions already in place and will also introduce new elements”, but gave no details.

By contrast, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that the new draft envisages direct talks with Tehran that would include the United States.

In his comments at the European Parliament, the Iranian negotiator stressed that Iran had any nuclear ambitions.

“In our defence doctrine the nuclear weapon has no place,” he said.

“How is it that, for our peaceful nuclear activities, they have issued three resolutions?” he said, adding “we are against weapons of mass destruction”.

“Those countries which claim that Iran is seeking nuclear weapons are now busy testing the second and third generation of these weapons. They have turned some countries into arsenals of weapons of mass destruction,” Jalili argued.