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China favors diplomatic solution to Iran nuclear issue
(chinadaily.com.cn - agencies)
Updated: 2006-02-07 15:18 "It's not the end of the road," Annan said of the Security Council referral.
"I hope that in between, Iran will take steps that will help create an
environment and confidence-building measures that will bring the partners back
to the negotiating table."
In his brief report, ElBaradei cited E. Khalilipour, vice president of the
Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, as saying: "From the date of this letter,
all voluntarily suspended non-legally binding measures including the provisions
of the Additional Protocol and even beyond that will be suspended."
Iran's president
Mahmoud Ahamdinejad, claps during a ceremony at the 13th Iranian world
prize for Book of the Year, in Tehran, Iran, Monday, Feb. 6, 2006.
[AP] | Calling on the agency to sharply reduce the
number of inspectors in Iran, Khalilipour added: "All the Agency's containment
and surveillance measures which were in place beyond the normal Agency
safeguards measures should be removed by mid-February 2006."
Earlier, Russia's foreign minister warned against threatening Iran after U.S.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld reportedly agreed with an interviewer at the
German daily newspaper Handelsblatt that all options, including military
response, remained on the table.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov called for talks to continue with
Tehran, adding: "I think that at the current stage, it is important not to make
guesses about what will happen and even more important not to make threats."
U.S. Sen. Richard Lugar, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee,
called the UN Security Council to impose strict sanctions on Iran if it fails to
comply with U.N. resolutions and arms agreements and warned that inaction would
greatly increase the chances of military conflict.
Lugar nonetheless stressed that the United States favors a diplomatic
solution.
"Diplomatic and economic confrontations are preferable to military ones,"
Lugar said. But he cautioned that "in the field of nonproliferation, decisions
delayed over the course of months and years may be as harmful as no decisions at
all."
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