TruthNews

Iran Given Two Weeks To Freeze Nuclear Program

International Christian Embassy Jerusalem, 21 Jul 2008

Iranian officials claimed that "progress' was made in this weekend's showdown in Geneva over Tehran's renegade nuclear program, but Western leaders presented a different picture, insisting new sanctions await unless Iran agrees to halt its uranium enrichment activities within two weeks.

Following Saturday’s talks in Geneva, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Tehran had failed to "give a serious answer" in regards to a package of incentives offered in exchange for Iran's cessation of uranium enrichment. The US and five other world powers are now standing firm on a two-week deadline for Iran to freeze suspicious nuclear activities and embark upon negotiations, or face future penalties, said Rice.

In the first high-level US-Iranian contacts since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Rice had dispatched State's third ranking diplomat, Amb. William Burns, to "sit in" on the meeting as a sign that Washington would back the EU's incentives package if accepted by Iran, as well as to demonstrate there was unity on potential sanctions among the six nations present, which included Britain, China, France, Germany and Russia.

Burn’s attendance marked a shift in Washington’s long-standing policy that it would not send a senior US diplomat to Iran unless uranium enrichment had stopped. But instead of getting a clear answer from Iran at the meeting, Rice charged that Iran’s chief negotiator Saeed Jalili delivered a monologue full of "small talk about culture."

"We expected to hear an answer from the Iranians but, as has been the case so many times with the Iranians, what came through was not serious...People are tired of the Iranians and their stalling tactics," groused Rice.

In contrast, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadenijad called the talks a "step ahead" and announced that the country's official answer would be issued soon, Iranian state radio reported on Sunday.

Just a day before, however, a member of the Iranian delegation had said there was "no chance" Tehran would halt its uranium enrichment, insisting that it was used for power production and not to bolster Iran’s nuclear program.

The offer discussed at the Geneva meeting called for a six-week "freeze for freeze," in which Iran would stop its enrichment activities and the West would suspend economic sanctions to help facilitate progress towards a more permanent resolution of the standoff.

Wasting little time, the US is already drawing up new financial penalties against Iran that would target everything from gasoline imports to the insurance sector, according to the Wall Street Journal. The sanctions could include measures to impede Iran's shipping operations in the Persian Gulf and its banking activities in Asia and the Middle East, US officials said.