AFP, Brussels, Dec 8, 2009 – EU foreign ministers on Tuesday threatened new measures against Iran if it blocks progress in efforts to resolve the dispute over its controversial nuclear programme.
’Iran’s persistent failure to meet its international obligations and Iran’s apparent lack of interest in pursuing negotiations require a clear response, including through appropriate measures,’ the ministers wrote in a text which will now go forward to a full EU summit on Thursday and Friday.
’The European Union would support action by the UN Security Council if Iran continues not to co-operate with the international community over its nuclear programme,’ the agreed text added, in a reference to further possible United Nations’ sanctions against Tehran.
Western powers suspect Tehran is pursuing nuclear technology to make atomic weapons. Iran denies the charge, saying its ambitions are to gain peaceful nuclear power.
Austrian Foreign Minister Michael Spindelegger said the European Union would put a resolution forward to the security council for fresh sanctions.
’If this resolution is not adopted or largely taken on board, the European Union could then decide unilaterally on sanctions against Iran,’ he was quoted by the Austrian Press Agency as saying.
’The patience of the international community is still there but is hanging by a single thread,’ he warned.
The UN Security Council has already imposed three sets of sanctions on Iran for enriching uranium at its first plant in the central city of Natanz.
But negotiating powers, led by the United States, are seeking to both engage Iran and hold out the threat of new sanctions.
They want Tehran to agree to an IAEA-brokered deal which envisages sending its stocks of low-enriched uranium to Russia and France for conversion into nuclear fuel for a research reactor in the capital.
The European Union ’remains ready to engage with Iran in order to reach a negotiated solution to the issue,’ the foreign ministers agreed after meeting in Brussels, as long as Tehran takes ’concrete decisions towards that end.’
A defiant Iranian President Mahmoud Ahamdinejad said last week that Iran will itself enrich uranium up to 20 percent purity.
Iran is building the new facility deep inside a mountain near the Shiite shrine city of Qom, and disclosure of its existence outraged Western powers.
The EU foreign ministers in the text urged Iran to fully comply with UN Security Council resolutions, adding that the construction of the Qom facility was in breach of Tehran’s obligations.
The approved summit text adds that the EU foreign ministers should ’consider options for next steps’ at their next meeting in January.
The EU summiteers are also set to voice their ’deep concern’ at what the bloc calls continued human rights violations in Iran.
The UN’s top human rights official on Tuesday called on Tehran to ’respect’ the right to protest, amid fresh demonstrations reported by official media in Iran Tuesday.
The previous day anti-government protesters had used an annual Students Day ceremony on and around Tehran campuses to stage new demonstrations against the Iranian president’s re-election.
Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt told reporters after presiding over the two-day meeting of his EU counterparts that the recent ’violent suppression of peaceful demonstrations’ had led EU nations to ’significantly strengthen the language’ used in the statement.
The EU text also voiced concern for the safety of European envoys and citizens in Iran who have been put on trial and called for their prompt release.
’Any action against one EU member state is considered an action against the entire EU,’ the text stated.