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IRAN DEFIANT DESPITE LONDON CRISIS MEETING
By Gareth Smyth and Najmeh Bozorgmehr

** Tehran's resumed nuclear research plan 'irreversible' **

Financial Times (UK)
January 15, 2006 - 16:36 UT

http://news.ft.com/cms/s/6219da1a-85bf-11da-bee0-0000779e2340.html

TEHRAN -- Hamid-Reza Asefi, Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman, on Sunday said Tehran’s resumption of nuclear research was “irreversible.”.

The declaration came despite an emergency meeting in London on Monday of diplomats from the European Union, U.S., China, and Russia to discuss action against Tehran.

Neither Mr. Asefi nor president Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad, who gave a rare press conference on Saturday, clarified whether the research, resumed last week, included any uranium enrichment.

Defending the resumption, Iran’s foreign ministry issued a statement on Saturday stressing that Tehran remained open for negotiations and was still suspending “fuel production,” the enrichment needed for power generation or potentially, says the West, a bomb.

The suspension begun in 2003 as a “goodwill gesture” during talks with the EU, and continues despite the EU declaring the talks at a “dead end.”

Germany, France, and Britain -- who led the EU in those talks -- are expected to join the US in arguing at Monday’s meeting with China and Russia that Iran be referred to the security council for possible sanctions, despite Tehran’s warning last week this would prompt it to end its acceptance of snap U.N. inspections of its atomic facilities.

Beijing has already warned referral would escalate the situation.

Some leading Europeans also advised caution. Javier Solana, the EU foreign policy chief, said military action against Iran was “not in the mind of anybody,” and Gernot Erler, deputy German foreign minister, said trade sanctions against Iran would be undermined by demand, mainly from China and India, for its energy resources.

In a further sign that Iran is keeping open the chance of talks, the FT has learned the foreign ministry will appoint three experienced diplomats as new ambassadors in France, Germany, and the UK.

European officials had expressed fears that fundamentalists close to the president would replace the current envoys -- pragmatists involved in the nuclear talks -- whose removal was announced in October.

The choice for Paris is Ali Ahani, ambassador to the EU and Luxemburg; the new consul in London will be Rasoul Movahedian, former ambassador to the Czech Republic and Portugal; and Mohammad-Mehdi Akhoundzadeh, Iran’s ambassador to international bodies in Vienna including the IAEA, will go to Berlin.

“These three may lack the authority and experience of their predecessors, but they are not radicals,” a senior official told the FT. “They are technocrats -- not seasoned diplomats but experienced enough.”

A senior reformist said Mr. Ahmadi-Nejad’s radicalism was now tempered by Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

“His [earlier] performance created a broad anti-Ahmadi-Nejad coalition inside the system,” he said. “Almost every day the leader is warned by the revolution’s veterans that Ahmadi-Nejad will fail, and so the leader is keeping a distance from him.”

The sense of Mr. Ahmadi-Nejad being curbed was encouraged by his first general press conference since taking office.

The president evaded reporters’ repeated invitations to repeat his calls last year for Israel to be moved to Europe or “wiped off the map” by the Palestinians. Instead, he reflected Tehran’s official suggestion of a referendum of indigenous inhabitants of historical Palestine, including the Jewish state.

On the nuclear issue, Mr. Ahmadi-Nejad asserted Iran’s “inalienable right” to technology as a signatory of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation treaty and pledged continued co-operation with the IAEA.

Mr. Ahmadi-Nejad said “1400 man-days” of IAEA inspections in Iran, “unprecedented” in the agency’s history, had not found “the least sign of diversion [from civilian to military use].”