Facing Deadline, Iran Asks Talks on N-Program

Feb 21, 08:44 PM

Current Headlines: By George Jahn

Iran's chief nuclear envoy said Tuesday his country wants negotiations on its uranium enrichment program. He made the offer on the eve of a U.N. Security Council deadline that carries the threat of harsher sanctions if it does not halt enrichment.

But the country's hard-line president said Iran will halt enrichment only if Western nations do the same.

A report from Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency, to his agency's 35 board-member nations could trigger sanctions. The report, due today, is expected to say Iran has expanded enrichment activities instead of freezing them.

Speaking to thousands in Iran, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said his country was ready to stop its enrichment program, but only if Western nations do the same.

"Justice demands that those who want to hold talks with us shut down their nuclear fuel cycle program, too," he said. "Then we can hold dialogue under a fair atmosphere."

The White House dismissed Ahmadinejad's call.

"Do you believe that's a serious offer?" White House press secretary Tony Snow asked. "It's pretty clear that the international community has said to the Iranians, 'You can have nuclear power, but we don't want you to have the ability to build nuclear weapons.' And that is an offer we continue to make."

Ahmadinejad's speech, nevertheless, was unusually conciliatory, avoiding fiery denunciations of the West. Iran's call for talks -- voiced separately Tuesday by Ahmadinejad, Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki and senior nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani -- suggested an attempt to convey flexibility on the eve of the deadline.

In Turkey, Mottaki said talks on the nuclear dispute should aim for an agreement allowing "Iran to achieve its rights" while eliminating "concerns" about its nuclear ambitions. Larijani, in Vienna, said his country was "looking for ways and means to start negotiations."

But the officials did not offer what the Security Council is demanding -- an immediate and unconditional stop to enrichment. Iran has long insisted that it will not stop its nuclear activities as a condition for negotiations to start.

The United States and its allies suspect that Iran is using its nuclear program to produce an atomic weapon -- charges that Iran denies, saying its aim is to generate electricity.

In the past year, Iran also has extended its war games maneuvers into busy shipping lanes in the Straits of Hormuz, the narrow mouth of the Persian Gulf through which two-fifths of the world's oil supplies pass, the top U.S. Navy commander in the Mideast said.

The moves have alarmed U.S. officials about possible accidental confrontations that could boil over into war and led to the recent buildup of Navy forces in the Gulf, Vice Adm. Patrick Walsh said in an interview with the AP and other reporters in Bahrain.

The carrier USS John C. Stennis -- backed by a strike group with more than 6,500 sailors and Marines and with additional minesweeping ships -- arrived in the region Monday. It joined the carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower after President Bush ordered the buildup as a show of strength.

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