Signals mixed over EU nuclear visit
Iranian media and legislators yesterday sent contradictory signals over a modified package of incentives to suspend uranium enrichment a day after it was presented by EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana.
There was no official comment from the government to the proposals, which offered international cooperation with Iran's nuclear program if it suspended development of its own enriched uranium fuel.
"The parliament will carefully study the package," said parliament speaker and former top nuclear negotiator, Ali Larijani in remarks broadcast live on the radio during an open session.
He said Iran would welcome negotiations but warned the West to not expect "Iranians to forget" their rights.
Another influential legislator, Allaeddin Boroujerdi, told the official news agency IRNA that "we can reach an agreement over common points."
The state-owned IRAN newspaper, in its editorial, welcomed the two sides' desire for negotiations and called it a sign of "a strategic and logical interaction."
However Hossein Shariatmadari, a close advisor to Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, called the package of incentives "empty," in an editorial in the hard line Kayhan newspaper.
Shariatmadari said the US and its European allies should have no doubts about the peaceful nature of Iran's nuclear program and Solana did not come to talk but to "threaten Iran so that it can be blackmailed by the US and its allies."
The proposal presented on Saturday was accompanied by a letter signed by Solana and the foreign ministers of the United States, Britain, France, Russia, China and Germany.
Agencies
(China Daily 06/16/2008 page6)
