Iran ‘to keep enrichment program’
Iran’s foreign minister has said his country’s “final target” is to enrich uranium on its own soil — even if it accepts a Russian proposal to enrich Iranian uranium there, according to Japan’s Kyodo News Agency.Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki was in Tokyo on Tuesday to meet with Japanese counterpart, Taro Aso.
The International Atomic Energy Agency said in a report to its board of governors that Iran had already begun uranium enrichment on a very small scale.
“We are talking about moving together from where we are now and there is no going back,” Mottaki said in an interview with Kyodo. “It means the current situation will be kept and will continue.”
It is difficult to say what this byplay really means. It may be an attempt at face saving by Iran before accepting the Russian propossal, or it may simply be a display of continued intransigence with the diplomatic games with Russia simply being an attempt to buy time.
The next big event remains El Baradei’s report to the U.N. next week. What he says will probably have a lot of weight and give us a better picture of where this all is going.
