[Mb-civic] FW: Israel breaks silence on EU-brokered Iran nuke freeze

[Golsorkhi]

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From: Samii Shahla <shahla at thesamiis.com>
Date: Thu, 13 Jan 2005 16:56:03 -0500
Subject: Israel breaks silence on EU-brokered Iran nuke freeze

World News
Deepikaglobal

Israel breaks silence on EU-brokered Iran nuke freeze


JERUSALEM, Jan 13 (Reuters) Israeli officials voiced serious doubts in
public for the first time this week over European Union efforts to
persuade Iran to abandon what Israel and the United States see as a
covert quest for a nuclear bomb.

Israel has never hesitated to condemn Iran's nuclear programme, but had
been careful not to criticise the attempts of the Europeans to get
Tehran to suspend key processes that could yield weapons-grade uranium
or plutonium.

The Israeli foreign minister and military intelligence chief spoke out
as the EU and Tehran negotiated political and economic rewards in
exchange for agreement from Iran -- which has always denied it is
trying to build an atom bomb.

The U.N. nuclear watchdog verified that Iran froze its uranium
enrichment programme as promised under a deal last November, although
the United States and Israel believe the Islamic Republic is using
talks with the EU to buy time.

''They (Europeans) achieved an agreement now with Iran. We do not like
it very much but still it is much better than it was before,'' Foreign
Minister Silvan Shalom said at a Jerusalem conference yesterday.

''We believe that it should be moved, should be transferred to the
(United Nations) Security Council, in order to stop the Iranians from
what they are doing,'' Shalom said in English.

Israel and the United States had long favoured bringing Iran before the
Security Council for possible sanctions over its nuclear programme.
Israel is widely thought to have nuclear weapons but has a policy of
never confirming or denying this.

Iran first promised the EU's ''big three'' in October 2003 that it
would freeze 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.
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