BRUSSELS, Belgium — Russia ignored Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s announcement Friday that the United States would continue along a two-track strategy to deal with Iran, pressing for new sanctions and demanding Tehran come clean about its nuclear program.
But the top U.S. diplomat was unable to persuade Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on the urgency of fresh sanctions.
Rice said her talks with Lavrov were “an extension of other conversations we have had,” suggesting the two didn’t see eye to eye.
Rice spent two days at NATO’s Belgium headquarters, galvanizing support for a U.S.-led drive for a third, tougher set of U.N. Security Council sanctions on the clerical regime. The sanctions are meant to force Iran to roll back elements of a nuclear program it claims is peaceful but that the United States and its allies have said could lead to a bomb.
A new U.S. intelligence report that concludes Iran actually stopped atomic weapons development in 2003 appears to undermine the Bush administration’s claim that Iran is working toward a bomb and thus poses an urgent threat. Rice and other U.S. officials insist Iran remains a danger, and they note that it could restart a shelved program using technology and materials it is still amassing.
After seeing Rice, Lavrov told reporters: “It fully confirms the information that we have: that there is no military element in their nuclear program. We hope very much that these negotiations with Iran will continue.”
Lavrov, who has become the public face of opposition to the U.S. and European sanctions strategy, has maintained that Russia has no evidence Tehran ever had a secret nuclear weapons program in violation of international treaty obligations.
Meanwhile, Iran decided at the last moment Friday not to attend a regional Mideast security conference where Defense Secretary Robert Gates is scheduled to deliver the keynote address, organizers said.
Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki had been scheduled to attend the conference, which opened Friday night, but the Iranians changed their minds and sent no one to the gathering in Bahrain’s capital.
Iran refused to provide a reason for the last-minute decision, but U.S. officials in Washington said Gates planned to address America’s standoff with Iran in his speech to the conference today.
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