India had also said on Saturday that military action or sanctions against Iran would exacerbate the situation and that it favored a solution which involves Tehran.
"Sanctions or military action - none of them is a lasting solution and will only exacerbate the situation. We need to evolve something that involves Iran," Indian Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon said in an interactive session at the India Global Forum in New Delhi.
23 April 2008: FNA
TEHRAN (FNA)- Iran gave an upbeat assessment of two days of talks with a UN team of nuclear experts headed by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Deputy Director General, Olli Heinonen.
"The talks with (Olli) Heinonen were positive," a senior Iranian nuclear official, who asked not to be named, told Reuters. He did not say what was discussed, but Iranian officials said that Heinonen's visit was intended to "advance cooperation" with the IAEA.
IAEA officials said that the UN nuclear watchdog would have no comment before Heinonen returned to Vienna on Wednesday.
Western diplomats said that the talks aimed to get substantive Iranian responses to intelligence reports alleging weaponization studies by Tehran. Iran has strongly denied the intelligence reports, describing them as completely baseless, forged or irrelevant. The IAEA has also refrained from endorsing authenticity of the intelligence, announcing that the information remains unverified.
Tehran has repeatedly pointed out that those who claim Iran pursues a non-peaceful drive should first present strong and undeniable evidence to substantiate their claims.
Iran says its nuclear program is a peaceful drive to produce electricity so that the world's fourth-largest crude exporter can sell more of its oil and gas abroad. The US and its western allies allege that Iran is pursuing a nuclear weapons program while they have never presented corroborative evidence to substantiate their allegations against the Islamic Republic.
Tehran stresses that the country has always pursued a civilian path to provide power to the growing number of Iranian population, whose fossil fuel would eventually run dry.
Iran is under three rounds of UN Security Council sanctions for turning down illegitimate calls to give up its right of uranium enrichment, saying the demand is politically tainted and illogical.
The five permanent members of the UN Security Council and Germany met on April 16 in Shanghai to discuss whether to sweeten incentives they had offered Iran in 2006 to persuade it to give up its nuclear rights. But the session, attended by the political directors of the six powers, ended in total fiasco.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said today that he wanted the next round of six-nation talks to be held in London, at the same time as a meeting of the quartet of Middle East peace mediators on May 1-2.
Iran, which says it wants nuclear technology to generate electricity, has so far ruled out halting or limiting its nuclear work in exchange for trade and other incentives, and says it will only negotiate with the UN nuclear watchdog.
Iran has repeatedly said that it considers its nuclear case closed after it answered the UN agency's questions about the history of its nuclear program.
The US is at loggerheads with Iran over the independent and home-grown nature of Tehran's nuclear technology, which gives the Islamic Republic the potential to turn into a world power and a role model for other third-world countries. Washington has laid much pressure on Iran to make it give up the most sensitive and advanced part of the technology, which is uranium enrichment, a process used for producing nuclear fuel for power plants.
Washington's push for additional UN penalties contradicted the recent report by 16 US intelligence bodies that endorsed the civilian nature of Iran's programs. Following the US National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) and similar reports by the IAEA head - one in November and the other one in February - which praised Iran's truthfulness about key aspects of its past nuclear activities and announced settlement of outstanding issues with Tehran, any effort to impose further sanctions on Iran seemed to be completely irrational.
The February report by the UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, praised Iran's cooperation in clearing up all of the past questions over its nuclear program, vindicating Iran's nuclear program and leaving no justification for any new UN sanctions.
Tehran says it wants to enrich uranium merely for civilian purposes, including generation of electricity, a claim substantiated by the NIE and IAEA reports.
Iran has also insisted that it would continue enriching uranium because it needs to provide fuel to a 300-megawatt light-water reactor it is building in the southwestern town of Darkhoveyn as well as its first nuclear power plant in the southern port city of Bushehr.
Not only many Iranian officials, including President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, but also many other world nations have called the UN Security Council pressure unjustified, especially in the wake of recent IAEA reports saying Iran had increased cooperation with the agency.
Qatar Prime Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jabr al-Thani said at a joint news conference in Berlin with German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Tuesday that sanctions against Iran have always proved counterproductive.
Sheikh Hamad urged dialogue rather than punitive measures, "Sanctions are counterproductive," he said. "To us in the region, it is very important that the problem is solved peacefully and not with violence."
US President George W. Bush finished a tour of the Middle East in winter to gain the consensus of his Arab allies to unite against Iran.
But hosting officials of the regional nations dismissed Bush's allegations, describing Tehran as a good friend of their countries.
India has also rejected West's approach towards Iran's nuclear issue.
India's National Security Adviser M.K. Narayanan Sunday asked Western powers to show respect for Iran and its great influence in the region.
"Iran is a big country and you need to deal with them diplomatically and with erudition," he said.
India had also said on Saturday that military action or sanctions against Iran would exacerbate the situation and that it favored a solution which involves Tehran.
"Sanctions or military action - none of them is a lasting solution and will only exacerbate the situation. We need to evolve something that involves Iran," Indian Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon said in an interactive session at the India Global Forum in New Delhi.
"Ultimately it is an issue of whether or not it is implementing the obligations it undertook. It depends on technical assessments which are best done by the IAEA," he said.
Stressing on the need to change the world looks at non-proliferation, Menon favored new international consensus on the issue.
"We need to have in place a system to which Iran is a party," he said adding sanctions and military action will only "exacerbate" the situation.
Bush's attempt to rally international pressure against Iran has lost steam due to the growing international vigilance, specially following the latest IAEA and US intelligence reports.
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