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US to pursue Iran new sanctions
17/01/2008 10:20 - (SA)
Washington - The Bush administration won't back down on pursuing new sanctions against Iran over its nuclear programme, despite questions about their usefulness raised by government auditors, US officials said.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will press Washington's case for fresh UN sanctions next week in Europe even as the US considers imposing more penalties of its own to step up pressure on Tehran to halt activities that could lead to the development of a nuclear weapon.
Announcing Rice's January 22 meeting in Berlin with her foreign minister colleagues from the four other permanent members of the UN Security Council and Germany, the State Department said on Wednesday the United States had no plans to change its sanctions strategy in dealing with Iran even after Congress's investigative arm said the impact of the policy was unclear.
"The whole strategy here is to use various kinds of diplomatic pressure at a gradually increasing rate to try to get a different set of decisions out of the Iranian leadership," spokesperson Sean McCormack told reporters.
Opposition
The administration has unsuccessfully lobbied for the Security Council to pass a third Iran sanctions resolution for nearly a year but has faced stiff resistance from Russia and China, which have been unwilling to agree to either the language or timing of such a move. Chinese and Russian opposition to sanctions has been hardened by the findings of a US National Intelligence Estimate that said Iran stopped working on a secret nuclear weapons programme in 2003.
Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte, who was to raise the issue of new sanctions on Thursday in Beijing with Chinese Deputy Foreign Minister Dai Bingguo, said the intelligence estimate showed only that Iran has suspended work on warhead design but was pressing ahead on uranium enrichment and missile development.
"Work continues by Iran on two out of those three parts of that programme," Negroponte told reporters in Beijing before departing for the talks. "So we think it's important that there be an additional Security Council resolution because Iran is out of compliance on previously passed resolutions," he said.
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