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VIENNA - Iran is demanding that Europe's leading powers back its right to nuclear technology that could be used to make weapons, dismaying the Europeans and strengthening Washington's push for U.N. sanctions, the Associated Press reported, quoting an unnamed European Union official and unnamed diplomats.
Declining to respond to a list of demands presented by Iran last week - whose contents were made available to the AP - the Europeans are urging the Iranian government to instead make good on a pledge to clear up suspicions about its nuclear ambitions.
But diplomats said Monday that Iran's demands undermine the effort by France, Germany and Britain to avoid a confrontation. They had hoped to persuade Tehran to give up technology that can produce nuclear arms, but now are closer to the Bush administration's view that Iran should be referred to the U.N. Security Council for violating the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, the AP reported, quoting the unnamed diplomats.
The Iranian list, presented during talks in Paris, includes demands that the three European powers:
Support Iran's insistence that its nuclear program have access to "advanced technology, including those with dual use": equipment and know-how with peaceful and weapons applications.
"Remove impediments" - sales restrictions imposed by nuclear supplier nations - preventing Iranian access to such technology.
Give assurances to stick by any commitment to Iran even if faced with "legal (or) political ... limitations," an allusion to Security Council sanctions.
Agree to sell Iran conventional weapons.
Commit to push "rigorously and systematically" for a nonnuclear Middle East and to "provide security assurances" against a nuclear attack on Iran, both allusions to Israel, which is believed to have nuclear arms and which destroyed Iraq's nuclear reactor in a 1981 airstrike to prevent it from making atomic arms.
With Iran still under investigation, the demands stunned senior French, German and British negotiators, the AP reported, quoting an unnamed European Union official familiar with the Paris meeting.
Ignoring the list, the Europeans instead urged Iran to act on its leaders' pledge to clear up suspicions about their nuclear ambitions by Sept. 13, when the International Atomic Energy Agency meets to review Iran's nuclear program, the official said.
During a campaign stop Monday, President Bush said U.S. officials are working with other nations to make sure the IAEA, the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency based in Vienna, asks Iranian officials "hard questions" about their weapons activities.
"Iran must comply with the demands of the free world and that's where we sit right now," Bush said in Annandale, Va.