Vienna – Top U.S., Russian, Chinese and European officials plan to sign off this week on a package of incentives and penalties meant to reward Iran if it gives up uranium enrichment – and punish it if it doesn’t, diplomats said Monday.
Agreement by the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council plus Germany could open the way for sanctions if Teh ran remains defiant and refuses to abandon technology that can be used to make the fissile core of nuclear warheads.
The meeting of foreign ministers including Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was set for Thursday in Vienna, the diplomats said.
Tehran appeared unimpressed. One official repeated that Iran is permitted to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. Another announced that his country had experimented in technology that can be used to make a hydrogen bomb.
Tehran’s main goal was recognition of “the essential right of Iran to have nuclear technology,” Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said.
State television quoted nuclear official Sadat Hosseini as saying his country “is competing with the advanced world in the field of producing nuclear energy through fusion.”
International concern has focused on fears Iran could be trying to make a fission-type nuclear weapon by enriching uranium to weapons-grade level. Hosseini’s comments were likely to add to concern about Tehran’s interest in fusion, the main principle behind the hydrogen bomb.
But former U.N. nuclear inspector David Albright said the announcement was probably “not very worrisome. … They like to pretend they are competing, but their program is (probably) pretty rudimentary.”
