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Iran: EU incentives won't help

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published May 15, 2006

TEHRAN, Iran - Iran's president said Sunday it was pointless for Europe to devise an incentive package if it required Tehran to stop enriching uranium - effectively thwarting the latest international diplomatic effort before it even began.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad spoke on state television after returning from Indonesia, where he was warmly welcomed and won developing nations' support for the peaceful production of nuclear energy.

The hard-line leader said proposals for a political and economic package being shaped by the European Union were "invalid" if "they want to offer us things they call incentives in return for renouncing our rights."

Also Sunday, a Foreign Ministry spokesman declared "insignificant" the reports that inspectors from the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency found traces of highly enriched uranium on equipment from an Iranian research center.

Refusing to budge in his relentless and strident campaign to assert Iranian regional power and leadership, Ahmadinejad said opponents of Tehran's nuclear program were "living in the era of colonialism" and did not respect Iran's national sovereignty.

Iran insists its nuclear program is designed only to build electricity-generating reactors. The United States and some allies suspect Tehran is hiding a military program to make nuclear weapons.

Ahmadinejad's remarks were clearly aimed at European Union foreign ministers meeting today in Brussels to consider sweetening a package of incentives that would entice Iran to suspend uranium enrichment - an issue that has reached the U.N. Security Council but was put on hold to give the EU more time for diplomacy.

Iran also showed its determination not to step back when Foreign Ministry spokesman Hammed Reza Asefi on Sunday dismissed a report two days earlier that International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors had found traces of highly enriched uranium on some of Iran's nuclear equipment.

"It's insignificant. It's not important. Previously, things like this were said but later inspectors arrived at the right conclusions," Asefi told reporters.

It was the second time the IAEA inspectors found traces of highly enriched uranium at Iranian facilities. The first discovery was later traced to equipment from Pakistan that Iran bought on the black market during nearly two decades of clandestine activity.

[Last modified May 15, 2006, 08:07:03]