JERUSALEM: ISRAELI FOREIGN MINISTER SILVIAN SHALOM VOICES DOUBT THAT EUROPEAN UNION WOULD BE ABLE TO FORCE IRAN TO ABANDON NUCLEAR WEAPONS

Record ID: 400520

  • Title: JERUSALEM: ISRAELI FOREIGN MINISTER SILVIAN SHALOM VOICES DOUBT THAT EUROPEAN UNION WOULD BE ABLE TO FORCE IRAN TO ABANDON NUCLEAR WEAPONS
  • Date: 14th January 2005
  • Summary: (U6) JERUSALEM (JANUARY12, 2005) (REUTERS) 1. VARIOUS OF SILVAN SHALOM, ISRAELI FOREIGN MINISTER, SEATED WITH WORLD JEWISH CONGRESS DELEGATION 2. WOMEN LISTENING 3. (SOUNDBITE) (English) SILVIAN SHALOM SAYING: "For many years, Iran was Israel's problem only. Only in the last few months, or a year ago, when some European countries realise
  • Embargoed: 29th January 2005 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: JERUSALEM
  • City:
  • Country: Israel
  • Reuters ID: LVATG2TN7KGB3DESKQWFK337N3D
  • Story Text: Israel cool on EU-brokered Iranian nuclear freeze.

    Israel's foreign minister Silvian Shalom, voiced
    doubt on Wednesday (January 12, 2005) that the European Union
    (EU) would be able to force Iran to abandon what the Jewish
    state and Washington see as a covert effort to acquire
    nuclear weapons.

    Iran agreed in November to temporarily freeze key
    nuclear processes that could yield weapons-grade uranium or
    plutonium for an atom bomb while the EU and Tehran
    negotiate a package of political and economic incentives
    for the Islamic republic.

    The U.N. nuclear watchdog has verified that Iran has
    frozen its uranium enrichment programme as promised, though
    the United States and Israel believe the Iranians are only
    using talks with EU spokesmen from France, Britain and
    Germany to buy valuable time while Iranian scientists work
    at secret sites to build a bomb.

    "For many years, Iran was Israel's problem only,"
    Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom told a conference in
    Jerusalem.

    "Only in the last few months, or a year ago, when some
    European countries realised that the Iranians are
    developing a new missile with a longer range that will
    include Paris, Berlin, London, Madrid, and maybe the
    southern part of Russia, they started to act," he continued.

    Iran first promised the EU's "big three" in October
    2003 that it would freeze its uranium enrichment, a process
    of purifying uranium for use as fuel in nuclear power
    plants or weapons.

    But that deal fell apart last year after Iran resumed
    the production of centrifuges, machines that enrich uranium
    by spinning at supersonic speeds.

    The EU trio successfully revived the talks with Iran
    late last year in a move that rescued Iran from a report to
    the UN Security Council, which could have brought further
    international isolation and painful economic sanctions for
    Tehran.

    Shalom said Israel believed the Security Council was
    the proper forum to discuss Iran's nuclear programme,
    though he called the latest EU-Iran deal an improvement
    over the first one.

    "They achieved an agreement now with Iran. We do not
    like it very much but still it is much better than it was
    before. We (still) believe that it should be moved, should
    be transferred to the Security Council, in order to stop the Iranians
    from what they are doing," Shalom said.

    The Europeans want Iran to abandon all efforts to
    produce nuclear fuel, though Tehran has repeatedly said the
    freeze would be a temporary one, lasting for no more than a
    few months.

    Iran does not recognise Israel's right to exist.

    Israeli officials refer to the Iranian nuclear programme as
    an "existential threat" and have hinted Israel could resort
    to military force to stop Iran getting the bomb.

    Widely believed to be the Middle East's only nuclear
    power, Israel sent warplanes to strike the Iraqi reactor at
    Osiraq in 1981, driving Saddam Hussein's atomic quest
    underground. But Israel is increasingly isolated in its
    hawkish talk.

    The expected resignation of US Undersecretary of State
    John Bolton, a hard-liner on nuclear nonproliferation, may
    signal a shift in Washington to a less confrontational
    stance on Iran for President George W. Bush's second term,
    analysts say.





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