Iran threatens to restart plan for uranium enrichment

IRAN yesterday threatened to restart its uranium enrichment programme if talks with France, Britain and Germany fail today.

“If there is no agreement and negotiations collapse, there is no choice but to restart the programme,” said Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi.

Iran is due to hold talks in London today with Britain, France and Germany, who share Washington’s suspicions that Iran may be planning to develop nuclear arms and want Iran to give up uranium enrichment in return for incentives such as trade deals.

Iran insists its nuclear ambitions are limited to the peaceful generation of electricity and says uranium enrichment is a sovereign right it will never renounce. Four months of talks have not changed Tehran’s position.

The EU-3 expect Tehran to provoke a crisis after today’s meeting because the Europeans will not give the Iranians a clear response to Iran’s proposal that it be permitted to gradually build up its enrichment programme.

“This is the beginning of the controlled crisis we’ve been predicting,” said an EU diplomat.

But he added that the said the talks were unlikely to break down and Iran resume enrichment suspended in November while it negotiated a settlement to its nuclear dispute with the EU.

The Iranians know the EU would then support Washington’s call for a referral to the UN Security Council, which could lead to economic sanctions.

A more likely scenario is that the Iranians would resume less-sensitive activities linked to the production of nuclear fuel, like the processing of raw uranium, but would stop short of enriching it into atomic fuel.