SLOVENIA/AUSTRIA: Talks with Iran must continue in a positive way Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov says / U.S. ambassador to IAEA says selective cooperation by Iran is not enough

Record ID: 313788

  • Title: SLOVENIA/AUSTRIA: Talks with Iran must continue in a positive way Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov says / U.S. ambassador to IAEA says selective cooperation by Iran is not enough
  • Date: 14th November 2007
  • Summary: WIDE OF NEWS CONFERENCE (SOUNDBITE) (Russian) RUSSIAN FOREIGN MINISTER SERGEI LAVROV SAYING: "Regarding the questions on Iran we can use the same logic as with the status of Kosovo. If we will always say that the independence of Kosovo and the sanctions against Iran are unavoidable we will not reach anything but only worsen the situation. "We have to continue talks, give positive stimulus. The start of talks between Iran and IAEA is bringing some results. "At the end of the month we will get a report of Mr ElBaradei and an opinion of Mr Solana on talks with the secretary of the Security Council of Iran and based on that report we will all together collectively, not unilaterally, contemplate on how to get to the execution of the decision of the IAEA and the United Nations. We all have to concentrate on positive approach rather than on various announcements and prognoses." LAVROV AND RUPEL LEAVING ROOM
  • Embargoed: 29th November 2007 12:00
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  • Reuters ID: LVADACK2LD8OK9JO0188Y1AKIJXI
  • Story Text: Talks with Iran must continue in a positive way Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov says. U.S. ambassador to IAEA says selective cooperation by Iran is not enough.
    Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told a news conference during his one-day visit to Ljubljana on Wednesday (November 14) that talks with Iran should be held in a positive way.
    He used an analogy with Serbia's breakway province of Kosovo.
    "Regarding the questions on Iran we can use the same logic as with the status of Kosovo. If we will always say that the independence of Kosovo and the sanctions against Iran are unavoidable we will not reach anything but only worsen the situation."
    Lavrov was commenting on signals by U.S. diplomats that partial Iranian cooperation with the U.N. nuclear investigators would not be enough to stall steps to more sanctions against Tehran.
    "We have to continue talks, give positive stimulus. The start of talks between Iran and IAEA is bringing some results," Lavrov said.
    Due later this week, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report on Iran's compliance with a pledge to defuse suspicions it has a covert atom bomb programme will guide world powers on when to draft new U.N.
    sanctions and how biting they should be.
    In a gesture aimed at slowing momentum toward new sanctions, Iran has turned over a blueprint showing how to mould uranium metal into spheres to fit into nuclear warheads, fulfilling a key demand in a four-year-old IAEA inquiry, diplomats said.
    The European Union's foreign policy chief Javier Solana is widely expected to confirm in his report on recent dialogue with Iran that it remains unwilling to consider a suspension.
    But some Vienna diplomats said the IAEA report could cite just enough new examples of Iranian cooperation for Russia and China to again argue for further postponement of stiffer sanctions to allow more time for IAEA inquiries to work.
    "We all have to concentrate on positive approach rather than on various announcements and prognoses", Lavrov said.
    In Vienna, Gregory Schulte, U.S. envoy to the IAEA, said the agency's 35-nation board of governors, who meet next week, and United Nations Security Council members would not be content to be presented with piecemeal information from Iran.
    "Selective cooperation is not good enough," he told reporters at the U.N. watchdog's Vienna headquarters.
    "What the board of governors wants to understand, what the Security Council wants to understand, is what are they doing today and why are they not suspending those proliferation sensitive activities that the Security Council has directed that they suspend," Schulte said.
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