'Iran needs to consider the rest of the world' - Ambassador Schulte

With the threat of international sanctions looming over Iran, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Thursday that he was open to "new conditions" to resolve the stand-off. Is this a sign that the united front being taken by the US and other countries is paying off?

Iran still insists that it wants to enrich uranium to use in nuclear power plants; an increasing number of countries fear that it wants to use it to develop nuclear weapons.

The US Embassy recently organised a telephone conference call for Maltese journalists with the US permanent representative to the United Nations Office in Vienna and to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Gregory Schulte. He explained that the US wants a clear political signal - and not just the Iranians playing for time.

He explained that Iran - and the Iranians - stood to benefit from complying with UN demands to stop enrichment.

"There are two courses Iran can take: What the IAEA wants or its present course. Our aim is to get them to shift course. If Iran suspends these actions that are so worrying the world, the UN would suspend its sanctions.

"If they comply, Iran could become a much more respected country - in all sorts of ways. Banks and companies would be far more willing to do business there."

US President George Bush has repeatedly said that he wants to solve the issue by diplomacy but he raised fears of military action when he said that "nothing was ruled out". Ambassador Schulte reassured that the US was not looking to go to war. However, he warned that the sanctions being sought by the US were graduated and that the Iranians would face "worse and worse" pressure.

The Americans have taken pains to show that the US is not acting unilaterally on this, stressing that it has worked with Europe, Russia, China and other like-minded countries to "present Iran's leaders with a clear voice", as Ambassador Schulte reminded the IAEA board of governors last week.

"Iran's current course is a deep concern to us all and the time has come for the Security Council to back international diplomacy with international sanctions," he said, adding that sanctions did not, however, signal an end to diplomacy.

"Rather they would be an essential element of diplomacy to signal to the leaders in Iran that their continued defiance of the international community will not be tolerated."

The risk is that Iran's current enrichment programme will turn out to be a smoking gun and that there are no nuclear weapons, just as there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

However, the US believes that Iran's past is a fairly good indication of what it is capable of in the future. Ambassador Schulte referred to five pages of examples listed in the IAEA director general Mohammed El Baradei's report on Iran's failure to provide access to information, facilities and individuals saying that this had to be cause for concern.

Iran has also begun a second campaign of uranium conversion and by January will have enough uranium for 16 nuclear weapons - if this uranium were to be subsequently enriched.

Iran has been offered various options - although details have not been made public. Ambassador Schulte said, though, that the package would provide light water reactors to ensure that Iran had enough power, backed by legally binding reassurances of provision of fuel for the reactors.

Asked whether the Iranians could be deliberately trying to goad the US into action, casting itself as the aggrieved victim of US aggression, Ambassador Schulte said Iran was trying to make this into a US-Tehran issue.

"They think that this serves them well at home - but they also need to consider the rest of the world. It is the IAEA that reported Iran to the security council, not the US. And of the 16 non-aligned countries, eight agreed that Iran should be reported.

"The only way for the pressure to succeed would be for countries to work together. I am much more optimistic about the fact that the US and the EU are working together."

Russia has also signalled that it would consider supporting sanctions against Iran.

The same technology is used to make enriched uranium for both nuclear reactors and nuclear weapons.

Countries do not need to enrich uranium for a nuclear power programme. It is available on the open market. Six organisations around the world currently produce commercial-scale enrichment plants.

Nations that are signatories to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty have the right to make nuclear fuel for peaceful purposes but are subject to routine inspection by the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Other countries have conducted secret programmes. In the 1990s, South Africa gave up its programme while Libya renounced its work on nuclear fuel enrichment in 2003.

Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei issued a fatwa against nuclear weapons.

Iran hid its uranium enrichment programme for 18 years and it was only brought to light in 2003 by the International Atomic Energy Agency. The UN set August 31 as a deadline by which Iran had to halt its uranium enrichment. Iran ignored the deadline and actually started a new round of uranium enrichment on August 24, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency report to the UN Security Council.