One week after swearing in its new president, Iran returns to the spotlight over its nuclear programme, Rasha Saad reports Iran carried out its threat and resumed work at a uranium conversion plant near Isfahan on Monday, defying EU warnings that it could be referred to the UN Security Council for possible sanctions. Two tensed weeks of debate between the two did not succeed in convincing Iran to forego its nuclear ambitions, ending with an Iranian rejection of the EU package of incentives that included a trade agreement with Europe and help getting into the World Trade Organisation. Newly inaugurated President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad described the package as "unacceptable". At his swearing in ceremony Ahmadinejad underlined that "the Iranian nation won't accept tyranny." Late July, the Islamic republic accused the EU3 -- France, Britain and Germany -- of breaching the Paris Accord by not meeting an end of month deadline on offering a comprehensive proposal to Tehran. Tehran was referring to the November 2004 deal under which Iran agreed to suspend uranium enrichment and conversion for the duration of bilateral talks. The European Union denies there was ever a deadline to these talks. For their part, European countries charged that Iran's resumption of nuclear activities created a "grave crisis". German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder said Iran was charting a "confrontational course". The EU3 have called an emergency meeting of the UN's atomic watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), in Vienna to discuss possible ways forward. The three European countries previously warned that if Tehran broke the November agreement they would support US efforts to have Iran brought to the UN Security Council for possible sanctions. EU diplomats have voiced concern that Ahmadinejad, a religious conservative, will adopt a tougher stance on Iran's nuclear programme than former reformist President Mohamed Khatami. EU officials' fears escalated as Ahmadinejad chose to replace Iran's chief negotiator on the nuclear issue, Hassan Rowhani, a pragmatic cleric respected by his EU counterparts, with Ali Larijani, a hard-line figure. French Foreign Minister Phillipe Douste- Blazy said the tone of the letter which French officials received from Tehran rejecting the incentives was "particularly alarming", warning it was "contrary to the spirit of the negotiations we have held with Iran over the past two years." Both sides accuse the other of reacting contrary to the Paris Agreement. According to Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi, "the Europeans provide no guarantees for Iran's interests and are contrary to the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and the Paris Agreement." Iran says the EU proposal, which includes offers to help develop civilian nuclear energy and become a major transit route for Central Asian oil, is unacceptable as it denies Iran the right to produce its own nuclear fuel. The package of incentives was presented to Iran after nine months of torturous negotiations between the two parties. According to Iranian analyst Sadeq Al-Husseini, "The international community is trying to portray Iran as quashing a fair offer, but the fact is that Iran is the country abiding by international law and [the nuclear moratorium] the EU is demanding is against this law." Al-Husseini also said that the EU package includes a demand that Iran join in combating terrorism, which means that Iran should cancel its support of national resistance movements in the Islamic world -- principally Palestine, Iraq and Afghanistan. By Tuesday, however, there appeared a slim chance that the nuclear crisis could be averted, as both UN and Iranian officials expressed their desire to return to the table of negotiations. Following an emergency meeting, IAEA director Mohamed Al-Baradei called on all parties "to exercise maximum restraint," adding that "the only way these problems can be solved is at the negotiating table." On the same day Ahmadinejad reportedly said that he had new ideas on resolving Iran's nuclear standoff with the West and was ready to continue talks with the European Union so long as there were no preconditions. "We are ready for talks, and negotiations have never been interrupted by us," Ahmadinejad said in a telephone conversation with UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, the official Iranian news agency IRNA said. Ahmadinejad also added: "I will put forward initiatives in this respect after forming my cabinet," without elaborating further. Iran has repeatedly said its suspension of uranium conversion and enrichment is temporary and voluntary, as both activities are allowed under the NPT and its additional protocol. The issue is also seen as a matter of national pride for Iran, which insists it only wants to generate nuclear power in order to meet increased domestic energy demands and reduce its dependence on oil and gas. Tehran has so far been careful to stress that it is not restarting work on the most sensitive element, uranium enrichment; a process that can be used to make reactor fuel or atomic warheads. The Islamic republic has been subject to more than two years of investigations by the IAEA, which allegedly discovered a barrage of suspicious nuclear activity but no "smoking gun" to prove the existence of a weapons drive. According to analysts, the defiant stance Iran is adopting stems from the fact that Iranians feel justified in their legal rights and the fact that they allowed a UN inspection team to monitor the Isfahan site. They also banking that Russia, which is building Iran's first nuclear power plant, and China, a big client of Iranian oil, would not back sanctions at the Security Council. Al-Husseini also believes that Iran is relying on the fact that Europe has an interest in preventing the failure of nuclear talks. He explained that any economic or political siege mounted on Iran makes Europe lose influence over all the Middle East to the hegemony of US and Israel. Al-Husseini thus believes "the more Iran raises its' ceiling and is intransigent, the more the EU will offer new proposals." Meanwhile, the US this week mulled over the unprecedented step of refusing Ahmadinejad a visa to attend next month's UN General Assembly, the State Department said Monday. Deputy spokesman Adam Ereli said Washington was looking at the visa request by Ahmadinejad in light of allegations he might have been involved in the 1979 seizure of US diplomats in Tehran, leading to the 1979 US embassy hostage crisis, and the killing of an Iranian-Kurdish dissident leader in Vienna in 1989. US officials have said that Ahmadinejad was definitely a leader of the student movement in Iran at that time. But they say they have yet to corroborate his direct involvement in the hostage taking. " We take very seriously information that someone has been involved in hostage-taking of American citizens in contravention of international law and international practice," Ereli said Monday. "And that certainly is a relevant consideration in the (visa) matter at hand."
