The Security Council’s five permanent members and Germany failed to reach agreement at a meeting Monday on how to respond to the Iranian nuclear crisis but said they would forge ahead in the coming days to break the impasse.
The deadlock comes as U.S. and European officials confirmed that Britain had presented the United States with a paper outlining a possible diplomatic strategy to resolve the crisis, including new talks and concessions. But the British representative at Monday’s talks, John Sawers, said Britain had not made such a proposal at the meeting.
Undersecretary of State R. Nicholas Burns said the United States is not going to participate in direct negotiations with Iran on the nuclear issue.
Top foreign policy coordinators for the United States, Russia, China, France, Britain and Germany issued a joint statement that echoed an agreement Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had reached with those five governments in January. The statement expressed “deep concern” that Iran has “failed to respond positively” to requests by the United Nations’ Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency to suspend its uranium enrichment activities and allow for more intrusive U.N. inspections of its nuclear energy program.
From the Washington Post
Iran must be very worried because of this “deep concern”.
At the same time, Victor Harel, the Israeli Ambassador in Spain has stated that
“Iran is an international danger” because of “its economic potential, the antisemitism of his President, Ahmadinejad, and its intentions of achieving nuclear weapons”.
He also added that is necessary that the EU, USA and Israel continue to be united in pointing Iran as an international danger and the “conclusive” diplomacy, because if that policy does not succed “we will enter a much more dangerous path”.
Accordingly to Iran Focus, not only Israel is going to be the target -being that grave enough-, but looks like Iran is making an alliance with the Al-Qaeda people living in Iran.
We should also read a very discouraging post from Sandmonkey. The comments are also worth reading.
And by the way, looks like BBC has signed a deal with Iran. In fact a HUGE ad campaign:
“The publicity campaign will be in the form of advertisements introducing cultural, historical and development attractions of Iran,” said Deputy Head of ICHTF for Cultural and Communication Affairs Alireza Sajjadpour.
Talking to IRNA, he referred to BBC, CNN, Germany’s ZDF, al-Jazeera and al-Arabia as the international TV networks selected for introducing the tourist sites.
“We have signed a huge agreement with BBC,” he added. He, however, declined to cite the contracts’ details.
Are they going to talk about the mullahs and the human rights abuses? Are they going to speak about the women’s situation? I think it’s good that the internal situation of Iran is known abroad. But really, an ad campaign paid the ayatollahs is going to really show the real Iran? I just doubt it.We have only good news about the dissident Akbar Ganji, who is home at last: although he is very frail, he is more determined now to say what he said 6 years ago.
technorati tags: nuclear crisis, Security Council, Akbar Ganji, BBC, Victor Harel, Iran, Germany
The Anti-Jihad Pundit 