WASHINGTON, March 16, (Agencies): US General David Petraeus said on Tuesday Iranian efforts to develop a nuclear weapon appear to have been delayed “a bit” and voiced confidence it would not have a bomb this calender year.
“It has, thankfully, slid to the right a bit and it is not this calendar year, I don’t think,” the head of US Central Command, which oversees wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, told a Senate panel when asked when Iran would have a nuclear weapon.
China has become more concerned about international tensions over Iran’s nuclear programme, but remains doubtful sanctions can resolve the stand-off, the Chinese foreign minister said on Tuesday.
Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi was speaking after talks with visiting British Foreign Secretary (minister) David Miliband, where one of the key issues on the table was Iran.
Yang’s comments suggested he had given little ground on Western calls for Beijing to back proposed new sanctions over Tehran’s disputed nuclear activities, which China could block as a veto-wielding permanent member of the UN Security Council.
“Regarding the Iran nuclear issue, I wish to point out that this issue is the subject of widespread attention in the international community,” Yang told reporters.
“China has become more concerned about the current situation,” he said, adding Beijing still sought a diplomatic solution.
Western powers say Iran wants the means to make nuclear weapons and has violated non-proliferation safeguards. German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Monday the time had come for new sanctions.
Iran says its uranium enrichment activities are to make fuel for planned nuclear power plants.
China has resisted calls to tighten the economic screws on one of its major suppliers of oil, and Yang repeated Beijing’s long-standing position that sanctions could not resolve the tensions. But he stopped short of outright opposition.
“I have said before that sanctions do not provide a fundamental solution to the Iranian nuclear issue, ultimately this issue has to be resolved through peaceful negotiations,” he said.
“We will continue to make active efforts to bring about a diplomatic solution to the Iran nuclear issue.”
A draft Western proposal calls for restricting more Iranian banks abroad, but does not press for sanctions against Iran’s oil and gas industries.
At the news briefing, Miliband described tackling Iran’s nuclear programme as a “test for all of us” and noted China had registered its increasing concern.
“We have a shared goal in ensuring that Iran lives by its commitments under the non-proliferation treaty, and we are going to work very closely together to achieve it,” he added.
Miliband later told reporters Iran was the main topic of his meetings with Yang and Premier Wen Jiabao, where he said he made “detailed and lengthy presentations” on the issue.
“No one pretends that sanctions on their own are a golden key - that’s why we’ve got a dual-track policy. It is the combination of engagement and pressure that I think is most important,” he said.
“I don’t want to provide a running commentary on the Chinese position, but I think it’s clear to all that Iran is not in compliance with the requests of the UN Security Council,” Miliband added.
China is one of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, each holding the power to veto resolutions. It backed previous Iran resolutions, after working to cut measures that could threaten flows of oil and Chinese investments.
In 2009, Iran was China’s third biggest source of imported crude oil, behind Angola and top supplier Saudi Arabia. Iran supplied China with 23.1 million metric tonnes of crude, or 11.4 percent of China’s total crude imports.
While Beijing abstains from Security Council votes on decisions it dislikes, it is much less willing to use its veto and risk diplomatic isolation, especially if fellow Security Council member Russia backs a resolution.
Turkey’s prime minister said Tuesday it was “only rumours” that Iran was making nuclear weapons, stressing the Islamic republic’s right to develop civilian atomic power.
Speaking before meeting British Prime Minister Gordon Brown in London, Recep Tayyip Erdogan also questioned why countries like Israel did not face calls from the international community to disarm, while Iran did.
“It’s only rumours that Iran is making nuclear weapons,” Erdogan told the BBC, speaking through an interpreter.
“I believe it is Iran’s most natural right to employ nuclear energy for civilian purposes.”
Turkey has good relations with its neighbour Iran and has offered to host an exchange of its low-enriched uranium (LEU) with 20 percent enriched uranium to be supplied by world powers to Tehran as part of a UN-drafted deal.
Despotism
A day after his apartment block was besieged by hardliners calling for his prosecution, defiant Iranian opposition leader Mehdi Karroubi lashed out at the government, saying it was “plagued with despotism”, his website reported on Tuesday.
The cleric, who continues to question the legitimacy of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s re-election, said it was still difficult for him to understand how the hardliner won the poll last year given his government’s track record.
“Unfortunately, the (Islamic) republic has been plagued with despotism and elections have become meaningless. It has become only a term,” Karroubi told visitors from the central province of Isfahan, according to his website Sahamnews.org.
“How can one believe that a president with so many objections against him such as inflation, unemployment... gets more votes than he got in his first election?”
Ahmadinejad has been accused of stoking inflation with populist policies that have involved pumping large sums of money into the economy.
Karroubi again insisted that Ahmadinejad’s re-election was “not due to the popular vote which is why we saw an explosion of people” on the streets after the official results were announced.
In the immediate aftermath of the declaration of the results of the June 12 poll, hundreds of thousands of opposition supporters poured onto the streets to reject Ahmadinejad’s re-election.
Karroubi’s remarks came two days after hardliners reportedly gathered outside his Tehran home, calling for him to be put to death.
His wife, Fatemeh, charged that a group of “thugs” paid by “corrupt” government officials had vandalised the apartment block where the family lives.
Iran’s Fars news agency described the small but vocal crowd which gathered outside the flats as “students and families of martyrs” of the Iran-Iraq war.
Pictures carried by the pro-government Borna news agency showed the building defaced with red colouring, while slogans pronouncing “Death to Karroubi” were scribbled on the walls.
Karroubi and former prime minister Mir Hossein Mousavi have led a protest movement against Ahmadinejad since his June re-election, which they reject as massively rigged.
Karroubi was attacked by hardliners during Iran’s commemoration of the Islamic revolution of 1979 on February 11 and his car was shot at in January in the city of Qazvin, west of Tehran.
The outspoken cleric, who with Mousavi stood against Ahmadinejad in the June vote, has infuriated hardliners by charging some post-election detainees had been raped in jail. Iranian authorities vehemently deny the allegations.
France will consult Japan on efforts to curb Iran’s nuclear programme when its foreign minister visits Tokyo this week, amid growing pressure for new sanctions on Tehran, diplomats said on Tuesday.
Bernard Kouchner will also touch on the risk of nuclear proliferation by North Korea during visits to Tokyo and Seoul, they said.
Kouchner and Japan’s Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama will “work together on responding to the world’s big challenges such as ... nuclear proliferation,” foreign ministry spokesman Bernard Valero told reporters.
France, the United States and others are stepping up efforts to rally support for fresh United Nations sanctions on Iran, which key world powers suspect is trying to make a nuclear weapon.
The Islamic Republic insists its uranium-enrichment activities are aimed at generating power for civilian use.
“There are complex discussions on Iran ... we are going to work on them” as Japan prepares to take over the presidency of the UN Security Council in April, a senior diplomatic source said.
Kouchner’s trip will also be “a chance to talk with the Japanese government about their vision ... of the current situation in North Korea.”
North Korea alarmed world powers last year by test-firing a series of missiles after walking out of disarmament talks with world powers, including the United States, Japan and South Korea.
Rights
Western countries’ fixation on Iran’s disputed nuclear programme is blinding them to human rights abuses, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi said on Monday.
“In recent years, the nuclear issue has become the only subject that gets talked about abroad but it’s the tree that hides the forest, the forest being human rights violations in Iran,” Ebadi told journalists in Paris.
The West suspects Iran of secretly trying to develop nuclear weapons, a charge rejected by Tehran, which says its atomic programme is purely for civilian energy purposes.
“Iran holds two sad records, that for the number of imprisoned journalists and that for the number of minors executed,” the Iranian human rights campaigner told a press conference to mark the release of a book by her in France.
Girls can be held criminally responsible from the age of nine in the country and boys from the age of 15, she said.
Ebadi, who has lived in exile in London for the last six months, said that Iran’s protest movement was made up of different political persuasions but “the common denominator is democracy and respect for human rights.”
She said that she would not hesitate to return to Iran if needed but that she currently felt “more useful” abroad.
Iran welcomed on Tuesday a resolution by the US House of Representatives sending its citizens greetings on the Persian New Year but urged Washington to “stop plotting” and to free nationals it is holding.
“This is a good thing,” said foreign ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast when asked by AFP to comment on Monday’s House of Representatives vote and to assess the situation after last year’s historic Persian New Year message from US President Barack Obama.
But Mehmanparast added that Washington’s good wishes for Nowruz were overshadowed by its other actions against Iran.
“If they want Iranians to have a happy Nowruz, they should stop plotting against the Iranian people, stop laying traps for Iranian nationals and they should free Iranian citizens they are holding so they can spend Nowruz with their families,” Mehmanparast said during his weekly news conference.
Iran says 11 of its citizens are being held in US jails, including a nuclear scientist who went missing last year in Saudi Arabia.
Panahi
The wife of top Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi told AFP on Tuesday that she has been unable to see her husband in Tehran’s notorious Evin prison since his arrest earlier this month.
Fifty Iranian filmmakers and artists, in a signed letter released on Tuesday, urged the authorities to release Panahi, a news agency reported.
“Ever since he was apprehended, I have managed to talk to him twice. I went to Evin to meet him last Thursday, but was not allowed to meet,” Tahereh Saeedi said of the Tehran jail where her husband is being held.
Media reports have said Panahi was arrested for making a film about the unrest which rocked the Islamic republic after last year’s disputed re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
But his wife denied these reports, saying “the film was being shot inside the house and had nothing to do with the regime.”
Saeedi also said that the authorities had still not filed any charges against her husband.
“I spoke to (Tehran prosecutor Abbas Jafari) Dolatabadi yesterday, but he did not give me any precise answer. But I sensed that he has a positive approach to the case.”
According to opposition websites, Panahi was arrested along with 16 other people, including Saeedi and the couple’s daughter and six human rights activists. Fourteen of those detained have been freed so far.
Panahi, a vocal backer of the opposition movement, was arrested when security forces raided his Tehran home on March 1.
Soon afterwards, Dolatabadi said Panahi was not arrested for political reasons or because he is an artist. He was “accused of some crimes and arrested with another person following an order by a judge.”
Panahi, 49, is known for his gritty, socially critical movies such as “The Circle,” which bagged the 2000 Venice Golden Lion award, “Crimson Gold” and “Offside,” winner of the 2006 Silver Bear at the Berlin film festival.
In February, the authorities banned Panahi from leaving the country to attend the Berlin film festival.
In a signed letter released by the ILNA news agency on Tuesday, 50 Iranian filmmakers and artists called for Panahi to be set free.
They said the country’s film industry has been Iran’s “cultural ambassador and representative to the world over the past 30 years since the Islamic revolution.”
“We ask the ministry of culture, intelligence and head of judiciary to take measures to release” Panahi, the letter said.
Meanwhile, Iran deployed hundreds of policemen across Tehran on Tuesday to quell any possible opposition protests as the nation began celebrating the annual Persian fire festival, witnesses told AFP.
Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei had on Sunday urged Iranians to shun the festival after branding it un-Islamic and an event which causes “a lot of harm.”
But witnesses said people had already begun celebrating the ritual, setting off firecrackers to mark the ancient pagan festival of Charshanbe Soori, which is held on the eve of the last Wednesday of the Persian calendar year.
They said police were deployed in Tehran’s Haft-e Tir Square, Saadat Abad and Velanjak - regular venues for opposition protests over last June’s disputed re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
For the past 10 months, opposition supporters have used public events to stage anti-government demonstrations, and security forces have warned they will crack down on any such outbursts staged on Tuesday.
“People should hold the celebration near their homes. Gatherings in main streets will be confronted,” a senior police official was quoted as saying by the ISNA news agency.
Charshanbe Soori is a prelude to Nowrouz, the Persian New Year which starts on March 21 and marks the arrival of spring.
Iranians celebrate the festival by lighting bonfires in public places and leaping over the flames, shouting “Sorkhiye to az man, Zardiye man az to (Give me your redness and I will give you my paleness).”
Jumping over the flames symbolises a hope for happiness in the new year and an end to the suffering of the year gone by.
Khamenei said the festival has “no basis in sharia (Islamic religious law) and creates a lot of harm and corruption, (which is why) it is appropriate to avoid it.”
Every year casualties are reported, many from burn injuries, including from accidents linked to firecrackers. Media in recent days have already reported the deaths of seven people making or lighting firecrackers.
Some clerics see the ritual as heretical fire-worshipping, although it has been marked in Iran for centuries and, like the Persian New Year itself and other ancient rituals, has survived the advent of Islam.
Main opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi has urged his supporters not to use the festival as an excuse to stage anti-government rallies and not to provoke hardliners.