Nuclear Talks at U.N. Open,With Focus on Iran
By NEIL MacFARQUHAR
Published: May 3, 2010
Todd Heisler/The New York Times
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad spoke at the United Nations on Monday.
Todd Heisler/The New York Times
Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad after speaking at the Nuclear Non- Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference Monday at the United Nations in New York.
As Mr. Ahmadinejad spoke, members of delegations from a number of countries, including the United States and many members of the European Union, walked out of the General Assembly.
In opening the conference, Secretary General Ban Ki-moon had called on Iran to prove that its nuclear program was solely for peaceful purposes and to accept a compromise deal offered to Tehran last fall.
Mr. Ahmadinejad was so eager to knock down claims that Iran was blocking the deal that he started his speech with a denial, even before giving the traditional Muslim blessing at the start of any talk, “In the name of God the merciful, the compassionate.”
Instead, Mr. Ahmadinejad started right in by saying that the ball was not in Iran’s court, but in that of the other negotiators.
“To us, it is an accepted deal,” he said. Under the terms, Iran would send 1,200 kilograms of enriched uranium to Moscow and then to France for refinement into fuel rods for its research reactor in Tehran, which is used for medical purposes.
Though not solving the issue of a suspected military program, the deal was seen as a confidence building measure, but Western states accuse Iran of never giving a clear answer on the proposal. They also say that Iran has demanded, at different times, that the refinement take place on Iranian soil, or that the uranium be refined in smaller increments.
The rest of Mr. Ahmadinejad’s speech focused on the horrors of nuclear war, saying that the United States had earned the enmity of the world for being the first to use nuclear weapons. He singled out the arsenal of Israel as a threat, but did not mention the stockpiles held by China and Russia, which have been dragging their feet about imposing new Security Council sanctions on Iran for its nuclear program.
Lawrence Cannon, Canada’s foreign minister, dismissed the Iranian leader’s speech as a “publicity stunt” and said the world still demanded that Iran comply with Security Council resolutions about its nuclear program. But Mr. Cannon and other foreign ministers also said they did not want the issue of Iran to completely hijack the conference, since there were other disarmament issues that needed addressing.
Mr. Ban said the conference negotiations, due to last until the end of May, should focus on a few central issues: more nuclear arms cuts; greater transparency in national nuclear programs; getting the three states outside the treaty — India, Pakistan and Israel — to sign it; and a nuclear-weapons-free zone in the Middle East.
But amid the standard calls for arms cuts at the conference, the main drama is shaping up to be the showdown over Iran’s nuclear program, with Mr. Ahmadinejad’s speech marking a rare appearance by a head of state.
Mr. Ban called on Iran to comply with Security Council resolutions demanding that it stop enriching uranium and to cooperate with the International Atomic Energy Agency in answering outstanding questions about whether its program was peaceful or aimed at developing a nuclear weapon.
“The onus is on Iran to clarify the doubts and concerns about its program,” Mr. Ban said, with President Ahmadinejad sitting impassively in the audience, listening to a translation of the speech through an earpiece.
Mr. Ban said that the need to strengthen the nonproliferation treaty remained as important as ever, given the expanding number of countries with nuclear programs and the possible threat of nuclear terrorism.
“The nuclear threat remains real,” Mr. Ban said. “It has evolved in new and varied forms.”
Mr. Ban also called on North Korea to return to negotiations over its nuclear program. North Korea, which has tested nuclear devices, withdrew from the nonproliferation treaty in 2003.
Yukiya Amano, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, singled out Iran, North Korea and Syria for their lack of cooperation with the agency. North Korea has refused any cooperation with the agency since April 2009, he said, while Syria has refused to engage since June 2008 over questions about what officials suspect was a nuclear facility imported from North Korea and destroyed by Israel.
Mr. Amano said Iran needed to comply with the safeguards agreement it had signed with his agency. The agency “remains unable to confirm that all nuclear material is in peaceful activities because Iran has not provided the necessary cooperation,” he said, adding that Iran should “clarify activities with a possible military dimension.”
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