Iran sets terms for halting nuke work
Foreign Desk Report

VIENNA (Austria)—Iran is open to discussing the suspension of uranium enrichment but has rejected US demands to do so ahead of talks with six world powers seeking an end to the nuclear crisis.
A text of Tehran's 21-page response to an incentives package -- offered by the five permanent UN Security Council members Britain, France, Russia and the United States, as well as Germany -- ruled out any freeze ahead of negotiations.
Iran's confidential response was given in Tehran on August 22 to diplomatic representatives of the six nations and was posted Monday on the web site of the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS).
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Monday reiterated Washington's insistence that any suspension of enrichment activity be in place and verifiable before negotiations on resolving the deadlock over Iran's disputed nuclear program begin.
ISIS president David Albright said in a statement that he was making the Iranian document public since the enrichment issue was to be discussed at a meeting this week in Vienna of the UN watchdog International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
Albright said the good news was that "Iran is at least open to negotiating the status of its enrichment program."
But Iran has made even talking about a possible enrichment freeze conditional on the issue being taken off the table of the UN Security Council, which has threatened possible sanctions.
In the text of its response, Tehram demanded "simultaneous steps by the other party" to include "termination of Iran's dossier in the (UN) Security Council and returning it to the IAEA".
It also called on the six-nation group "as a show of goodwill to abandon all restrictions that they practice beyond the legal international norms in different areas" -- a possible allusion to US sanctions against Iran now in effect.
Albright said: "What looks at first glance to be an important step ... is undermined by a series of qualifying statements that are highly critical of the UN Security Council's actions on Iran and demand that it end consideration of the matter."
Iran also demanded security guarantees, including "the commitment to disarm the Zionist regime ( Israel) from weapons of mass destruction (WMD)" if Tehran is to give assurances that "it would not use its nuclear capability for other than peaceful applications".
Iran does offer to allow for more intensive IAEA inspections under an Additional Protocol to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), but only if the Security Council, and its punitive powers, are no longer a threat.
Top Iranian nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani set much the same conditions when he met in Vienna over the weekend with European foreign policy chief Javier Solana, who was representing the six world powers, a Western diplomat told AFP.
"Larijani said the Iranians would consider, consider not actually carry out, a two-month halt in enrichment. It was all very conditional," the diplomat said, in relating a briefing from Solana.
The Iranian offer first revealed Sunday had raised hopes of a breakthrough in the international standoff over Iran's nuclear ambitions.
But the diplomat said that Larijani's conditions dashed these hopes as they would guarantee Tehran the right to sensitive nuclear fuel work and protect it from any punitive UN action.
Iran has defied a Security Council August 31 deadline for it to freeze the strategic nuclear fuel work or face possible sanctions.
The United States is expected to begin work on a sanctions resolution as early as this week.