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NUKEWARS
Iranian opposition calls for sanctions
by Stefan Nicola
Berlin (UPI) Mar 23, 2009


Iran forcing us to impose sanctions: Kouchner
Paris (AFP) March 23, 2010 - French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said Tuesday there was "no other choice" but to impose fresh sanctions on Iran as its nuclear programme is suspect. "The defiant attitude adopted by the Iranian government now leaves us no other choice: we have to seek new sanctions," Kouchner told the French Senate. "We will continue to seek dialogue but what responses have we got so far? Nothing tangible," he said, adding that Tehran's nuclear programme did not have "credible" civilian goals as claimed by the Islamic Republic.

France, the United States and others are stepping up efforts to rally support for fresh United Nations sanctions on Iran, which key world powers suspect is trying to make a nuclear weapon. Tehran insists its uranium-enrichment activities are aimed at generating power for civilian use. Kouchner said Iran had increased the range of its missiles, was not cooperating sufficiently with the UN nuclear watchdog and had spurned "all our offers of dialogue and cooperation." The minister also hit out at North Korea, which alarmed the world last year by test-firing a series of missiles after walking out of disarmament talks with global powers, including the United States, Japan and South Korea.

He said Pyongyang "not only threatens regional peace and stability" but also "exports ... insecurity ... especially in the Near and Middle East." Countries making up the so-called "P5-plus-1" trying to rein in Iran's nuclear ambitions -- the five veto-wielding UN Security Council members Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States; plus Germany -- have become increasingly alarmed at Tehran's intransigence. A UN Security Council vote on a resolution increasing economic sanctions against Iran's leadership and Revolutionary Guard is expected within weeks.

World will stop Iran getting nuclear arms: Blair
Washington (AFP) March 23, 2010 - Middle East peace envoy Tony Blair warned Iran on Monday the world will do "whatever it takes" to stop it acquiring a nuclear weapon. "Iran must not be allowed to acquire nuclear weapons capability. Iran must know that we will do whatever it takes to stop them getting it," Blair told the pro-Israel lobby AIPAC. "The danger is if they suspect for a moment we might allow such a thing," he told delegates on the last day of the three-day annual policy conference of AIPAC, the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee.

"We cannot and we will not. This is not simply an issue of Israel's security. This is a matter of global security, mine yours, all of us," the former British prime minister said. "Iran's regime is the biggest destabilizing influence in the region," he said, adding that both Israelis and Arabs know this. He was alluding to Iran's support for anti-Israeli Muslim militant groups in Lebanon and in the Palestinian territories as well as to Shiite militants in Iraq, which was formerly led by Sunnis, the majority group in the Arab world. Yemen has also accused Shiite northern rebels of taking money from Iranians and of plotting to create a Shiite zone along the Saudi borders.

During the AIPAC policy conference, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US Seccretary of State Hillary Clinton raised alarms about the perceived nuclear threat from Iran. Clinton said it was worth taking the time needed for the United Nations Security Council to adopt new sanctions "that bite" against Iran. Israel, which sees the threat more urgently, has raised the threat of a pre-emptive military strike against Iran's nuclear sites. The United States, Israel and others fear that Iran's uranium enrichment program masks a drive for a nuclear bomb. Tehran denies the charge, saying it is for peaceful nuclear energy.

An Iranian opposition leader exiled in Europe urged the West to step up the pressure on Tehran but warned against a military strike, arguing that change in Iran can come from within only.

Maryam Rajavi, head of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, an umbrella opposition group with headquarters in Paris, said the regime in Tehran was the biggest threat to global peace.

"(U.S.) President (Barack) Obama and leaders in Europe should make their judgments based on this past year's experience and no longer call for negotiations with this regime," Rajavi told United Press International in an interview Tuesday before she addressed a group of German parliamentarians in Berlin. "For years, the United States and Europe have tried to go this way without getting anything in return. The appeasement course has only given the Mullah regime time to get closer to the nuclear bomb."

The West and Iran are embroiled in a years-long conflict over the Islamic Republic's nuclear program. While world powers fear Iran is on the way to a nuclear weapon, Tehran says the program is used for civilian energy purposes only.

The regime raised further suspicion, however, when it announced this year that it planned to enrich uranium to 20 percent, seen as a technological milestone in the path toward a nuclear weapon.

In recent weeks, the United States, Britain, France and Germany have called for tougher economic sanctions against Iran, a course even Russia is now ready to support.

In her speech to the German parliamentarians, Rajavi lauded this new development and urged the West to pass sanctions on the energy and financial sector.

"We received credible information from inside the regime that even minimal sanctions against the banking sector will seriously handicap the regime," she said.

She added that the regime has been seriously weakened by the protests and by "tensions inside the clerical regime that have reached the highest circles."

Rajavi warned against a military strike, however, saying the West should instead support and legitimize the Iranian opposition.

Her NCRI is controversial because it includes the People's Mujahedin of Iran, classified as a terror organization by Iran and the United States for its armed struggle against the regime in the 1980s and 1990s.

However, the European Union removed the group from its terrorist list in January 2009 after Britain had done so in 2008 and its members have abstained from armed opposition. Around 3,400 of them live in Camp Ashraf in Iraq, where they were disarmed by U.S. troops in 2003.

The NCRI has in the past unveiled allegedly secret acts by the Iranian regime, relying on sources inside the country. Some of those allegations have proven true, while others haven't.

The group scored a major success when it disclosed the existence of two secret nuclear facilities in Iran -- the Natanz enrichment plant and a reactor in Arak.

The NCRI sees itself as the leading opposition group outside Iran and has been very vocal in the aftermath of the controversial Iranian presidential elections last June.

Critics say the elections, which saw President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad winning a second term, were rigged. Tehran cracked down violently on the hundreds of thousands of protesters who took the streets all over the country in the weeks after the vote. Thousands of regime opponents were arrested. The West harshly criticized Iran for the violence. Rajavi said the opposition remains unwavering despite reports that is has been hit hard by government-launched violence.

"The suppression of the regime against the uprising was very harsh but it continues and one cannot say it was weakened," she told UPI.

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NUKEWARS
US to block Iran on nukes, sanctions will take time: Clinton
Washington (AFP) March 22, 2010
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Monday the United States will not "compromise its commitment" to prevent Iran getting a nuclear bomb, but sanctions that bite will take time. In excerpts of a speech she will deliver to the pro-Israel lobby AIPAC, Clinton said it "is taking time to produce these sanctions... but we will not compromise our commitment to preventing Iran from acquiring ... read more


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