China, IAEA Say Keep Negotiations Going with Iran; British Push for Sanctions

With the Peoples Republic of China holding the chairmanship of the UN Security Council for January, the Permanent Five-Plus One (P5+1) talks in New York on Jan. 16, ended with no new sanctions against Iran. Instead, China said Jan. 20, through Foreign Ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu, "We always stand for a peaceful settlement of the issue through dialogue and negotiations." Ma also said that concerned sides should show more flexibility, reported Washington TV, which broadcasts into Iran from the U.S.

British and Israeli warmongers and their press outlets heated up their verbal attacks on Iran, when it was reported that Iran had submitted a written memorandum to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna sometime over the last several days. The Iran memo reportedly says in writing, what Iranian officials have been saying since November: that Iran would be willing to hand over smaller quantities of LEU (low enriched uranium) in immediate exchange for fuel for its nuclear reactors. A proposal put out by the IAEA and the P5+1 in October 2009 suggested that Iran ship 70% of its LEU to France and/or Russia, which would then return to Iran the fuel. Now it turns out, according to reports from the Nuclear Threat Initiative (a U.S. based specialty think tank directed by former members of the U.S. military and Senate), that such an exchange would not return the reprocessed uranium to Iran for about one year. Well-placed U.S. intelligence sources have told EIRNS that the objective of specifying the amount of LEU to be turned over as 70% was to make sure that Iran did not have enough LEU to re-process for a bomb. The Iranians have said that they do not intend to turn over all that LEU at one time, but propose to do it in increments.

Many US/European press outlets are saying that Iran's memo is a rejection, so there must be a renewed move for sanctions. But the IAEA says point blank that the negotiations between the IAEA and Iran continue to be on the table. "The IAEA will continue to work in good faith as an impartial intermediary," IAEA press spokeswoman Gill Tudor told Reuters. "We hope that agreement among the parties will be reached as quickly as possible [to] contribute to the establishment of confidence."

At the same time, British Foreign Minister David Miliband was in London calling for stepped-up sanctions, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was meeting with Chancellor Angela Merkel in Germany, chewing her ear about the need for stepped up sanctions.