Uranium

Need to pressure Iran on nuclear issue

The U.N. nuclear watchdog's report on Iran this week showed the international community must push for a faster response from Tehran over its nuclear program, Germany said on Tuesday.

The five permanent U.N. Security Council members plus Germany are offering Iran a package of incentives to give up its uranium enrichment, so far without success.

On Monday the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said Iran's alleged research into nuclear warheads remained a matter of serious concern and Tehran should provide more information on its missile-related activities.

"Here, open questions remain, where we have to push for an answer with more time pressure," German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier told members of NATO's parliamentary assembly meeting in Berlin, referring to the IAEA report.

The IAEA also said in its report Tehran was holding back information on high-explosives testing relating to its nuclear program.

"The ball is in the Iranians' court," Steinmeier said.

"Either it is picked up there, and we're getting reasonable answers to our questions, or the entry into talks with the aim of a diplomatic solution to the conflict is further delayed," he added.

"The alternative would then be an increase of international pressure, also through the U.N. Security Council."

The IAEA has been pressing Tehran for answers after Western intelligence said Iran had covertly studied how to design atomic bombs.

Iran has dismissed the intelligence as baseless, forged and irrelevant. Iran has been the subject of three United Nations sanctions resolutions since 2006, all demanding that it cease its nuclear enrichment activities, which it has refused to do.

"Over the past three months, we have worked on a renewed offer program by the international community, which has been put together and which will probably be handed over to Iran during the first half of June," Steinmeier said.

European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana, who is expected to deliver the updated offer by major powers, said on Monday he hoped to go to Iran in the next month to discuss Tehran's disputed nuclear program.

A senior Iranian official said Monday's IAEA report showed that Tehran's nuclear program was peaceful, the semi-official Fars News Agency reported.

Iran, the world's fourth-largest oil exporter, says its nuclear program is directed solely at the peaceful generation of electricity and rejects Western assertions that it is secretly pursuing nuclear weapons.

(Published by Reuters 27, 2008)