Europe ready to review Iran nuclear proposals

WASHINGTON, May 04, 2005 -- AFX-Europe

The European Union is ready to review new proposals from Iran on its controversial nuclear program if there are guarantees from Tehran that it is not trying to secure a nuclear weapon, the EU's Javier Solana said Wednesday.

"If they come up with something new, revolutionary, a new idea, we are willing to analyze it," he told reporters while on a visit to Washington.

"For the moment they have not come up with anything which will give us the same kind of guarantees that a cessation (of uranium enrichment) will bring," Solana added. "They have to put some ideas on the table."

Meanwhile Iran reiterated it was sticking by its controversial effort to make its own nuclear fuel, but still said it wanted to continue negotiations with the European Union aimed at easing international alarm.

Speaking on state television in Tehran, President Mohammad Khatami pledged that any nuclear activities that may resume -- despite a deal with the UK, France and Germany -- would be "still very far away" from the highly-sensitive process of enriching uranium.

Iran insists it only wants to enrich uranium to make fuel for an atomic energy programme, but its possession of the entire nuclear fuel cycle could also hand it the capacity to produce nuclear weapons.

Iran has been subjected to over two years of investigations by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN's nuclear regulator, after it emerged the country had been covering up its activities for 18 years.

Since then, the IAEA has uncovered plenty of activity deemed suspicious - including black market acquisitions of sensitive dual-use technology - but no "smoking gun" that proves a weapons drive.

As a signatory of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), the country insists it has the "right" to peaceful nuclear technology. The US says Iran is merely "cynically" exploiting a loophole in the treaty.

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