Iran vows no weakness over nuclear program

Rice: ‘We will use available channels’
Rice, speaking in Berlin, said U.S., European and Russian diplomats all want Iran back at the bargaining table.

“We reconfirmed we will use available channels and the Security Council to try to achieve that goal,” she said following a breakfast meeting with her counterparts from Germany, Russia and the European Union.

The Security Council is demanding an immediate and unconditional stop to enrichment, after which European-led negotiations over an economic reward package could begin. Iran has long insisted it will not stop its nuclear activities as a precondition for negotiations.

In moderate remarks Wednesday directed at Washington — the key backer of tougher U.N. action — Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said the dispute “has to be decided peacefully with the United States.”

Harsh invective from Iran
But other top Iranian officials used harsher language, and none showed signs of compromise on the main demand of the U.S. and other world powers — a halt to enrichment and related activities.

“The enemy is making a big mistake if it thinks it can thwart the will of the Iranian nation to achieve the peaceful use of nuclear technology,” Iranian state TV’s Web site quoted President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as saying Wednesday.

With the United States bolstering its naval forces in the Gulf and cracking down on Iranians within Iraq it says are helping Shiite militias, concerns have grown that Washington might be planning military action.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair said “the only sensible way” to solve the crisis was to pursue political solutions, but that he could not “absolutely predict every set of circumstances.”

Still, “I know of nobody in Washington that is planning military action on Iran,” Blair told BBC radio. “Iran is not Iraq. There is, as far as I know, no planning going on to make an attack on Iran and people are pursuing a diplomatic and political solution.”

The Security Council sanctions targeted Iran’s nuclear and missile programs and persons involved in them.

Resolution talks start next week
Discussions on a new resolution aimed at stepping up pressure on Iran to suspend enrichment were expected to start next week, a Security Council diplomat said in New York, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.

Part of the sanctions target companies suspected of involvement in Iran’s nuclear program — a measure that an Iranian dissident group said Tehran was circumventing by renaming the companies and otherwise disguising them, or setting up new ones.

The National Council of Resistance in Iran said firms under sanctions that were renamed were the Farayand Technique Co. and the Pars Thrash Co. It named new companies set up to work on Iran’s enrichment programs while avoiding sanctions as Tamin Tajhizat Sanayeh Hasteieh, Shakhes Behbood Sanaat and Sookht Atomi Reactorhaye Iran.

All are headed by Gholamreza Aghazadeh, head of Iran’s atomic energy programs, and some employ others on the Security Council’s list of those involved in Iran’s nuclear program, said the group, the political wing of the People’s Mujahedeen of Iran, which advocates the overthrow of Iran’s Islamic government.

There was no independent confirmation of the information provided by the group, which the U.S. and the European Union list as a terrorist organization. But it has revealed past secret Iranian nuclear activities subsequently verified by the IAEA or governments.

In Tehran on Thursday, 400 students burned British and Israeli flags and urged the government not to scale down the nuclear program.

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