Rohani insists on country’s nuke rights ahead of UN meet
TEHERAN: President Hassan Rohani demanded yesterday that Western governments recognise Iran’s right to enrich uranium in any nuclear deal, ahead of his departure for United Nations talks.
Mr Rohani, a moderate on Iran’s political scene whose election in June had raised Western hopes of a breakthrough in long-stumbling nuclear talks, said a deal to allay Western suspicions was dependent on acceptance of Iran’s enrichment programme.
‘‘If they accept these rights, the Iranian people are a rational people,’’ he said. ‘‘We stand ready to cooperate and together we can settle all the region’s problems and even global ones.’’
His comments came on the eve of his departure for the UN General Assembly in New York, where he is scheduled to meet French President Francois Hollande.
Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif is already in New York for talks with his British and French counterparts, and with European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, who represents the major powers in the nuclear talks.
Mr Rohani has said he wants those talks to resume as quickly as possible but insisted yesterday that they do so ‘‘without precondition’’.
The UN Security Council has imposed four rounds of sanctions on Iran for failing to heed six successive ultimatums to suspend uranium enrichment, which Western governments suspect conceals a covert drive for a weapons capability.
When Mr Rohani served as chief nuclear negotiator under reformist president Mohammad Khatami in the early 2000s, Iran agreed to a suspension of the process, which in highly extended form can produce the core of a nuclear warhead.
But the UN nuclear watchdog said at the end of August that Iran is continuing to expand its uranium enrichment programme under Mr Rohani’s presidency.
Mr Rohani has made several diplomatic overtures since his election in June, and there has been speculation that he could also meet US President Barack Obama on the sidelines of the General Assembly, which opens tomorrow.
But Washington warned on Friday that, while welcome, the overtures were not enough for it to consider loosening crippling sanctions on Iran’s oil and banking sectors that Mr Rohani wants eased.
White House national security spokesman Ben Rhodes said Washington was waiting for more concrete evidence that Iran was ready to make concessions.
‘‘We’ve always made clear that we’ll make judgements based on the actions of the Iranian government, not just on their words,’’ he said.
Mr Rhodes said the US had made it clear ‘‘we do have a preference for resolving this issue diplomatically’’, but warned: ‘‘We want to make clear that there’s not an open-ended window for diplomacy.’’
Mr Rohani hit back at those comments yesterday, warning Washington that it could ‘‘not use the language of war and diplomacy at the same time’’.
If there were any attack by Washington or its ally Israel, Iran would riposte ‘‘determinedly until victory’’, he warned.
Underlining his comments at a military parade, Iran displayed the largest number yet of two missiles it has developed that are theoretically capable of striking targets in Israel or US bases in the Gulf.
Iran paraded 12 Sejil and 18 Ghadr missiles, both with a range of 2,000km.
Mr Rohani’s comments also came on the eve of the official handover by its Russian constructors of Iran’s first nuclear power plant at Bushehr on the Gulf coast.
Atomic Energy Agency chief Ali Akbar Salehi said he expected work to start soon on a second nuclear power plant on completion of talks with Moscow. UNITED NATIONS: The shadow of a worsening war in Syria hangs over more than 130 heads of state and government at the annual UN summit of world leaders this week.
There is international desperation over the 30-month-old conflict in Syria that the UN says has left well over 100,000 dead.
An Aug 21 chemical weapons attack in the Damascus suburbs brought renewed divisions over the war.
But it has also offered a chance to take united action on a war that has now left more dead than Bosnia in the 1990s and whose two million plus refugees will soon overtake the numbers who fled the Rwanda genocide in 1994.
A Russia-US plan to destroy President Bashar al-Assad’s banned chemical arms could lead to a first ever UN Security Council resolution on the Syrian war this week. Russia, Mr Assad’s key backer, has vetoed three resolutions so far.
The war will also dominate talks on the summit sidelines. UN leader Ban Ki-moon will seek to revive hopes of a peace conference.
He could announce a date for a Geneva peace meeting after talks with US Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.
There are few hopes, however, that anything the international community does now will slow the pace of the carnage.
‘‘The people of Syria feel the international community is not doing enough for them,’’ said Mouna Ghanem, co-founder of Building the Syrian State, one of the first Syrian opposition groups, who is in New York to lobby ministers and UN leaders.
‘‘Everyone is losing hope. There has to be a peace conference. People think maybe the chemical weapons crisis means a solution is possible.’’