Thaindian News

Tehran, May 19 (DPA) Iran said Wednesday it was unimpressed by planned new UN Security Council sanctions over its nuclear programme, and said it would remain patient.
“We will wait as, like before, they (the world powers) will not gain anything with a new resolution and there are definitely some wise people among them who will prevent this (renewed sanctions),” atomic chief Ali-Akbar Salehi was quoted by the news network Khabar as saying.

“The issue of sanctions has lost its colour and is a futile effort, just discrediting internationally acknowledged regulations,” Salehi said after a cabinet session in Tehran.

US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Tuesday that the Security Council, including Iran allies China and Russia, had reached an agreement “on a strong draft” resolution on the sanctions.

The draft resolution came after weeks of negotiations among the five permanent, veto-wielding members of the Security Council. They explored ways to pressure Iran to disclose the full range of its nuclear activities and to halt uranium enrichment at 20 percent.

Iran agreed Monday to a deal brokered by Turkey and Brazil, to ship its low-enriched uranium to Turkey in exchange for medium-enriched uranium fuel for a Tehran research reactor.

“The world powers are just upset that some independent countries are defending their rights and no longer feel the need to follow them,” Salehi said.

He said Iran would forward Monday’s trilateral agreement to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna.

Salehi also said chief nuclear negotiator Saedi Jalili and the European Union’s foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, had agreed to meet “probably in Turkey”.

Also Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki, currently in Tajikistan, played down the importance of the UN resolution draft against Tehran.

“There is no chance for any new resolution against Iran… Let’s not take this seriously,” ISNA news agency quoted Mottaki as telling reporters in Tajikistan.

He declined to say what Iran would do if the resolution and sanctions were imposed and further said that it would be premature and too hypothetical to comment now on Iran’s reaction.

“An uranium swap deal brokered by Brazil and Turkey will go ahead,” Mottaki vowed.

The Iranian chief diplomat reiterated that Tehran would welcome a resumption of nuclear talks with the five Security Council member states plus Germany, saying also that the agreement in Tehran had urged a resumption of negotiations with the six states.

“I think from now on she (Hillary Clinton) will be the one who wants to buy time,” Mottaki also said in referring to US allegations of Iranian dawdling.

Earlier Wednesday, Iranian state television called new sanctions irrelevant and said world public opinion would make its own judgement.

State TV said Monday’s pact was expected to lead to a breakthrough in the nuclear dispute and renewed negotiations with world powers, which are worried that Iran is seeking to develop nuclear weapons.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast said Tuesday that Iran was “quite optimistic” that the Tehran agreement would be accepted by world powers to settle the nuclear dispute.

The agreement would be sent next week to the Vienna group - the United States, Russia and France - which had failed to broker a uranium-exchange deal in October at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

Iran insisted it is committed to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty but might revise its stance, and cooperation with the IAEA, if punished again by UN resolutions and sanctions.