AFP, Rome, May 26, 2009 – The international community must pursue dialogue with Tehran to prevent it from becoming a nuclear power, Italy’s foreign minister said Tuesday after Iran’s president ruled out talks with world powers.
’International dialogue with Iran must continue to stop new nuclear powers from emerging one after the other in an already sufficiently dangerous world,’ Franco Frattini told Rai Uno radio.
Iran ’doesn’t have a nuclear bomb yet and we hope it will never have it,’ he said.
’We make a distinction between nuclear with peaceful objectives and the atomic bomb, but international dialogue must continue,’ he said.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahamdinejad ruled out Monday any talks with world powers on his country’s nuclear drive, saying it would not deal with anyone outside the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN’s nuclear watchdog.
US President Barack Obama has vowed since taking office in January to pursue direct diplomacy with Iran on its controversial nuclear programme.
The United States and its European allies have pressed Iran to suspend its uranium enrichment activities out of fear that it is aimed at producing the material for a nuclear bomb.
Iran has defied UN sanctions by pressing ahead with atomic work, insisting that its programme is aimed at producing civilian nuclear energy.