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(01/07/08 4:27am)
VIENNA, Austria – They clapped before Rolando Villazon sang a single note.\nAfter all, it was the star tenor''s first performance since he suddenly canceled all engagements more than three months ago, for what his manager said were health reasons.\nSo for the audience cramming the Vienna State Opera on Saturday, it didn''t matter what Villazon sang – or even whether he sang. The first sighting of the Mexican tenor in the opening minutes of Jules Massenet''s "Werther" set off a ripple that within moments grew to waves of thunderous applause interspersed with shouts of "bravo."\nIt was an almost unnerving outburst of warmth from what is known as one of the world''s more reserved audiences.\nBut then, Villazon isn''t just any tenor.\nMany critics consider him as the heir in waiting to the likes of Placido Domingo and Jose Carreras. His performances with Russian diva Anna Netrebko sizzle, and the pair has been hyped up as opera''s new "love couple." At its best, his voice is a mixture of silver and honey. And even if it isn''t, his masterful theatrics are worth the price of even a better seat in any opera house.\nSo news in September that he was canceling his performances until at least early this year after a series of missed performances sent out shock waves beyond the reaches of the opera world.\nHis return Saturday set the stage for huge expectations that were mostly – but not completely – met.\nWhile wonderfully supple, and surprisingly strong at times, Villazon''s voice was occasionally lost in the more powerful orchestral passages - and it wasn''t the fault of conductor Marco Armiliato.\nAlthough he appeared to be hitting his high B''s, it wasn''t always apparent – because when trying too hard to be heard, Villazon''s lyric tenor just seemed to top out among all those potent brass passages of the second and third acts.\nVillazon himself appeared to be less than completely satisfied. Miguel Perez, who described himself as a friend of Villazon from Barcelona, said the tenor told him between breaks that he was "very happy" with the first act but "not very happy with the second."\n"It''s a very emotional evening for him," Perez told the AP.\nIf so, Villazon put those emotions to wonderful use. On Saturday, his theatrics made him the quintessential Werther, the emotionally vulnerable, brooding young man who obsesses over a woman he cannot have, shoots himself - and dies happily in her arms after she confesses her love \nfor him.
(11/16/07 3:04am)
A report from the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency on Thursday found Iran to be generally truthful about key aspects of its nuclear history, but it warned that its knowledge of Tehran’s present atomic work was shrinking.\nThe White House said it would continue to push for a third round of U.N. sanctions against Iran despite the findings by the International Atomic Energy Agency report.\nThe IAEA report, released to its 35 board members, also confirmed that Tehran continued to defy the U.N. Security Council by ignoring its repeated demands to freeze uranium enrichment, a potential pathway to nuclear arms.\nWhite House press secretary Dana Perino said the report indicated that Iran has not suspended its enrichment-related activities and continues to defy the international community.\n“We believe that selective cooperation is not good enough,” she said. “Iran continues to walk away from a deal that has been offered to them. We said they can have a civil nuclear program if they’ll just suspend their current activities.”\nBut top Iranian negotiator Saeed Jalili said the report shows that new sanctions would be “illegal action,” adding that Iran has answered all the questions by the IAEA and made “good progress” in cooperating with it.\nIn light of the IAEA report, “many accusations are now baseless,” Jalili said, referring to U.S. assertions that Tehran is pursuing nuclear weapons.\n“Those powers who base their accusations on this I hope will reconsider what they say,” he said.\nIf new U.N. sanctions are approved, “you should be asking what is the logic in this,” Jalili told reporters in Tehran.\nBritain’s Foreign Office also said it would pursue further sanctions from the Security Council and the European Union.\n“If Iran wants to restore trust in its program, it must come clean on all outstanding issues without delay,” the statement said. It also said Tehran must restore broader and stronger inspection rights to IAEA teams and mothball its enrichment activities to avoid such penalties.\nMuch of the 10-page report made available to The Associated Press focused on the history of Iran’s black-market procurements and past development of its enrichment technology – and the agency appeared to be giving Tehran a pass on that issue, repeatedly saying it concludes that “Iran’s statements are consistent with ... information available to the agency.”\nA senior U.N. official said that language did not mean that the IAEA’s investigation into past enrichment activities was “closed,” even though a work plan between the agency and Tehran set November as the deadline for clearing up the issue.\nIn Washington, the State Department suggested that China was blocking plans for a new meeting, tentatively set for Vienna on Nov. 19, of the five permanent members of the Security Council and Germany to discuss a new sanctions resolution.\nLast week, Iran said it stepped up uranium enrichment activities by fully running 3,000 centrifuges at its nuclear plant in the central city of Natanz. It would take some 54,000 centrifuges to fuel a reactor.
(08/29/07 1:15am)
VIENNA, Austria – Did someone kill Beethoven? A Viennese pathologist claims the composer’s physician did – inadvertently overdosing him with lead in a case of a cure gone wrong.\nOther researchers are not convinced, but there is no controversy about one fact: The master had been a very sick man years before his death in 1827.\nPrevious research determined that Beethoven had suffered from lead poisoning, first detecting toxic levels of the metal in his hair and then, two years ago, in bone fragments. Those findings strengthened the belief that lead poisoning may have contributed – and ultimately led – to his death at age 57.\nBut Viennese forensics expert Christian Reiter claims to know more after months of painstaking work applying CSI-like methods to strands of Beethoven’s hair.\nHe says his analysis, published last week in the Beethoven Journal, shows that in the final months of the composer’s life, lead concentrations in his body spiked every time his doctor, Andreas Wawruch, treated him for fluid inside his abdomen. Those lethal doses permeated Beethoven’s ailing liver, killing him, Reiter told The Associated Press.\n“His death was due to the treatments by Dr. Wawruch,” said Reiter, head of the Department of Forensic Medicine at Vienna’s Medical University. “Although you cannot blame Dr. Wawruch. How was he to know that Beethoven already had a serious liver ailment?”\nOnly through an autopsy after the composer’s death in the Austrian capital on March 26, 1827, were doctors able to establish that Beethoven suffered from cirrhosis of the liver as well as edemas of the abdomen. Reiter said that in attempts to ease the composer’s suffering, Wawruch repeatedly punctured the abdominal cavity, then sealed the wound with a lead-laced poultice.\nAlthough lead’s toxicity was known then, the doses contained in a treatment balm “were not poisonous enough to kill someone if he would have been healthy,” Reiter said. “But what Dr. Wawruch clearly did not know (was) that his treatment was attacking an already sick liver, killing that organ.”\nEven before the edemas developed, Wawruch noted in his diary that he treated an outbreak of pneumonia months before Beethoven’s death using salts containing lead, which aggravated what researchers believe was an existing case of lead poisoning.\nBut, said Reiter, it was the repeated doses of the lead-containing cream, administered by Wawruch in the last weeks of Beethoven’s life, that did in the composer.\nAnalysis of several hair strands showed “several peaks where the concentration of lead rose pretty massively” on the four occasions between Dec. 5, 1826, and Feb. 27, 1827, when Beethoven \nhimself documented that he had been treated by Wawruch for the edema, said Reiter. “Every time when his abdomen was punctured ... we have an increase of the concentration of lead in the hair.”\nSuch claims intrigue others who have researched the issue.\n“His data strongly suggests that Beethoven was subjected to significant lead exposures over the last 111 days of his life and that this lead may have been in the very medicines applied by his doctor,” said Bill Walsh, who led the team at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory outside Chicago that found large amounts of lead in Beethoven’s bone fragments. Research two years ago confirmed the cause of years of debilitating disease that likely led to his death, but did not tie his demise to Wawruch.\n“I believe that Beethoven’s death may have been caused by this application of lead-containing medicines to an already severely lead-poisoned man,” Walsh said.\nStill, he added, samples from hair analysis are not normally considered as reliable as from bone, which showed high levels of lead concentration over years, rather than months.\nWith hair, “You have the issue of contamination from outside material, shampoos, residues, weathering problems. The membranes on the outside of the hair tend to deteriorate,” he said, suggesting more research is needed on the exact composition of the medications given to Beethoven in his last months of life.\nAs for what caused the poisoning even before Wawruch’s treatments, some say it was the lead-laced wine Beethoven drank. Others speculate that as a young man he drank water with high concentrations of lead at a spa.\n“We still don’t know the ultimate cause,” Reiter said. “But he was a very sick man – for years before his death.”
(05/31/07 4:00am)
It's another sad case of a decent band plummeting into the ground. Success can mess with your head, and if it's been done before and the kids will buy it, then by God that's the way it's going to be done.\nOne thing's immediately apparent: The Used sound like the bastard child of My Chemical Romance and Fallout Boy, straight from the womb of a radio that craps out rainbows and screaming Paris Hilton heads. The album's first single, "The Bird and the Worm," features straight-up Panic at the Disco!-style staccato strings in an attempt to be something of epic proportions. Instead, the track just sounds like a pathetic emo storybook suckfest. \nThis album is toned-down from the band's previous material. Angry screams are traded in for sappy, whiney cooing and poppy, bitchy, clean vocals. Many of the songs are characteristically emo, and several of them are attempts to create popular hits, like the first track, "The Ripper," which is instead worsened by its industrial techno drums and pseudo-punk guitars. \nFor what it's worth, this is a diverse album. Unfortunately, that means that once the band gets something right, it is immediately erased by the next song. \nIf you buy this CD at Best Buy you get two bonus tracks. My God, I don't think I could take any more.
(02/23/07 5:00am)
VIENNA, Austria – Iran has expanded its uranium enrichment program instead of complying with a U.N. Security Council ultimatum to freeze it, the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency said Thursday in a finding that clears the way for harsher sanctions against Tehran.\n“Iran has not suspended its enrichment-related activities,” the International Atomic Energy Agency said in a report.\nAlthough its information was based on material available to it as of Feb. 17, a senior U.N. official familiar with Iran’s nuclear file, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on the issue, suggested the IAEA’s conclusion remained valid as of Thursday.\nThe IAEA detailed recent activities showing Tehran expanding its enrichment efforts – setting up hundreds of uranium-spinning centrifuges in an underground hall and bringing nearly 9 tons of the gaseous feedstock into the facility in preparation for enrichment. It added that Iranian officials had informed the agency that they would expand their centrifuge installations to have thousands of them ready by May.\nThe conclusion – while widely expected – was important because it could serve as the trigger for the council to start deliberating on new sanctions meant to punish Tehran for its intransigence over its nuclear program.\nIn the report, written by IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei, the agency also said the Islamic republic continues building both a reactor that will use heavy water and a heavy water production plant – also in defiance of the Security Council.\nBoth enriched uranium and plutonium produced by heavy water reactors can produce the fissile material used in nuclear warheads. Iran denies such intentions, saying it needs the heavy water reactor to produce radioactive isotopes for medical and other peaceful purposes and enrichment to generate energy.\nThe report also said agency experts remain “unable ... to make further progress in its efforts to verify fully the past development of Iran’s nuclear program” due to lack of Iranian cooperation.\nThat, too, put it in violation of the Security Council, which on Dec. 23 told Tehran to “provide such access and cooperation as the agency requests to be able to verify ... all outstanding issues” within 60 days.\nThe report – sent both to the Security Council and the agency’s 35 board member nations – set the stage for a fresh showdown between Iran and Western powers.\nIn Tehran, the deputy head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, Mohammed Saeedi, said: “Iran considers the (IAEA demand for) suspension as against its rights, the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and international regulations.”\n“That’s why Tehran could not have answered positively to the request by resolution 1737 of the U.N. Security Council for a suspension of enrichment activity,” Saeedi said, according to the official Islamic Republic News Agency.\nState Department spokesman Tom Casey said that Iran’s refusal to curtail its nuclear program is a “missed opportunity” for its government and people. \nAssociated Press writers Anne Gearan in Berlin and Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations in New York contributed to this report.
(10/25/06 2:41am)
VIENNA, Austria -- The United States, France and Britain will urge the U.N. Security Council to ban the sale of missile and nuclear technology to Iran for its defiance of demands to stop uranium enrichment, diplomats said Tuesday.\nThe U.N. diplomats told The Associated Press that a draft resolution would commit U.N. member countries to deny entry to Iranian officials involved in developing the country's missile or nuclear programs.\nThe measure also would deny most expert help provided by the International Atomic Energy Agency. Typical projects run by the U.N. atomic watchdog in Iran, as listed in a confidential IAEA document seen by the AP, help in disposing of nuclear waste produced by any reactor and local radiotherapy against tumors.\nOne of the diplomats, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the draft was not yet public, described all three measures as moderate and narrowly focused in an attempt to win Russian and Chinese backing to punish Iran's refusal to suspend uranium enrichment. The diplomat added that Moscow and Beijing could be formally presented with the draft as early as later this week.\nOn Monday, Iran's top nuclear negotiator, Ali Larijani, warned sanctions could backfire by making Tehran "more determined to continue with its nuclear activities," the country's official news agency reported.\nIran insists its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes. The United States and dozens of other countries fear, however, that it is secretly trying to make nuclear arms.\nA Security Council resolution passed last week imposed similar sanctions on the sale and transfer of technology that could contribute to North Korea's nuclear and ballistic missile programs after its test of a nuclear bomb.\nBoth Russia and China, which have veto power as permanent Security Council members, have agreed in principle to sanctions over Iran's refusal to heed an Aug. 31 ultimatum to freeze uranium enrichment and sharply increase cooperation with the IAEA in the Vienna-based agency's probe of its suspect nuclear activities.\nStill, both continue to publicly push for dialogue instead of U.N. punishments, despite the collapse last month of European Union-brokered attempts to entice Tehran into agreeing to at least a temporary enrichment freeze as a condition to multilateral talks meant to banish suspicions that Iran might want to build nuclear arms.\nCanceling IAEA technical assistance would do little to ease such fears. Such programs, which are freely available to all member countries, are restricted to medical or agricultural help, nuclear safety expertise and other peaceful applications that cannot be diverted for weapons purposes.\nBut it would be the first instance of IAEA technical cooperation being withdrawn from an agency member nation. As such, it would send a strong signal of international displeasure with Tehran.
(03/09/06 5:10am)
VIENNA, Austria -- Iran threatened the United States with "harm and pain" Wednesday for its role in hauling Tehran before the U.N. Security Council over its nuclear program and for plans to push fellow council members to impose tough measures against the Islamic republic.\nInternational Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei also said the United States should negotiate directly with Iran if negotiations reach the stage of focusing on security guarantees to Tehran in exchange for concessions on its nuclear program.\nThe end of Wednesday's meeting of the 35-member board of the International Atomic Energy Agency set the path for Security Council action. ElBaradei said his staff would send his report on Iran's nuclear program to the council by Thursday.\nThe United States and its European allies said Iran's nuclear intransigence left the world no choice. The Security Council could impose economic and political sanctions on Iran.\nWednesday's meeting was in effect the last step before the Security Council begins considering Iran's nuclear activities and international fears they could be misused to make weapons. It began with both Iran and the nations opposing its enrichment plans sticking to their positions.\n"The United States has the power to cause harm and pain," said Ali Asghar Soltanieh, a senior Iranian delegate to the IAEA. "But the United States is also susceptible to harm and pain. So if that is the path that the U.S. wishes to choose, let the ball roll."\nHe did not elaborate but suggested Iran was awaiting additional American moves.\nBut diplomats accredited to the meeting and in contact with the Iranians said the statement could be a veiled threat to use oil as an economic weapon.\nIran is the second-largest producer within the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, and a boycott could target Europe, China or India.\nThe White House dismissed the rhetoric out of Tehran.\n"I think that provocative statements and actions only further isolate Iran from the rest of the world," White House press secretary Scott McClellan told reporters traveling with President Bush to the Gulf Coast. "And the international community has spelled out to Iran what it needs to do."\nJohn Bolton, America's ambassador to the United Nations, said Iran's comments showed how much of a menace it was.\n"Their threats show why leaving a country like that with a nuclear weapon is so dangerous," he said.\nAt an OPEC meeting in Vienna, Iran Petroleum Minister Sayed Kazem Vaziri Hamaneh deflected questions about Iran's threat.\nHe later sought to ease worries, telling reporters: "So far there's no reason to reduce exports. Iran has no intention whatsoever of reducing its oil exports."\nOil supplies are tight worldwide and prices already are high. Although the United States does not buy oil directly from Iran, any Iranian effort to tighten world supplies would effect oil prices in the United States.\nIran also has leverage with extremists in Iraq, the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah and the Islamic militant group Hamas, which won Palestinian elections in January. Both groups are classified by the U.S. State Department as terrorist organizations.\nOn Tuesday, U.S. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld accused Iran of dispatching elements of its Revolutionary Guard to stir trouble inside Iraq.\nIran's statement was unusually harsh, reflecting Tehran's frustration at failing to deflect the threat of Security Council action in the coming weeks. It also followed tough words from Vice President Dick Cheney, who indicated Washington would do its utmost to use the council to pressure Iran to compromise.\n"The Iranian regime needs to know that if it stays on its present course, the international community is prepared to impose meaningful consequences," Cheney said in a Tuesday speech to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in Washington.\nTehran maintains its nuclear program is for generating electricity.\n"Our nation has made its decision to fully use nuclear energy for peaceful purposes and all have to give in to this decision made by the Iranian nation," Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said in Iran. "We have made our choice."\nIran also attacked "warmongers in Washington" for what it said was an unjust accusation that Tehran's nuclear intentions were mainly for military use. It also suggested America was vulnerable, despite its strength.\n"Surely we are not naive about the United States' ... intention to flex muscles," the statement said. "But we also see the bone fractures underneath."\n-- Associated Press reporters Nick Wadhams at the United Nations and Palma Benczenleitner contributed to this report.
(02/07/06 5:58am)
VIENNA, Austria -- Iran told the International Atomic Energy Agency to remove surveillance cameras and agency seals from sites and nuclear equipment by the end of next week, the U.N. watchdog agency said Monday.\nIran's demands came two days after the IAEA reported Tehran to the Security Council over its disputed atomic program. The council has the power to impose economic and political sanctions.\nIn a confidential report to the IAEA's 35-member board, agency head Mohamed ElBaradei said Iran also announced a sharp reduction in the number and kind of inspections IAEA experts will be allowed, effective immediately.\nThe report was dated Monday and made available to The Associated Press.\nThe moves were expected. Iranian officials had repeatedly warned they would stop honoring the so-called "Additional Protocol" to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty -- an agreement giving IAEA inspectors greater inspecting authority -- if the IAEA board referred their country to the Security Council.\nA diplomat close to the Vienna-based IAEA told the AP that Iran had also made good on another threat -- formally setting a date for resuming full-scale work on its uranium enrichment program, which can make either fuel or the nuclear core of warheads.\nThe diplomat, who spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity because the matter was confidential, refused to divulge the date set by Ali Larijani, Iran's chief nuclear negotiator, in a letter received Monday by ElBaradei.\nIn Dubai, United Arab Emirates, Secretary-General Kofi Annan said he was still hopeful that Iran will take confidence-building measures with the IAEA.\n"It's not the end of the road," Annan said of the Security Council referral. "I hope that in between, Iran will take steps that will help create an environment and confidence-building measures that will bring the partners back to the negotiating table."\nIn his brief report, ElBaradei cited E. Khalilipour, vice president of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, as saying: "From the date of this letter, all voluntarily suspended non-legally binding measures including the provisions of the Additional Protocol and even beyond that will be suspended."\nCalling on the agency to sharply reduce the number of inspectors in Iran, Khalilipour added: "All the Agency's containment and surveillance measures which were in place beyond the normal Agency safeguards measures should be removed by mid-February 2006."\nEarlier, Russia's foreign minister warned against threatening Iran over its nuclear program after Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld reportedly agreed with a German interviewer that all options, including military response, remained on the table.\nForeign Minister Sergey Lavrov called for talks to continue with Tehran, adding: "I think that at the current stage, it is important not to make guesses about what will happen and even more important not to make threats."\nLavrov said the use of force would be possible only if the United Nations consented.\nRumsfeld, in an interview with the German daily newspaper Handelsblatt, was asked if all options, including the military one, were on the table with Iran.\n"That's right," Rumsfeld responded, according to Handelsblatt's print edition Monday.
(06/20/05 1:00am)
VIENNA, Austria -- Board members of the U.N. atomic watchdog agency approved a deal Thursday that exempts Saudi Arabia from nuclear inspections, despite serious misgivings about the arrangement in an era of heightened proliferation fears.\nAlthough the Saudis resisted Western pressure to compromise and allow some form of monitoring, the board of the International Atomic Energy Agency had no choice but to allow it to sign on to the agreement.\nCalled the small quantities protocol, the deal allows countries whose nuclear equipment or activities are thought to be below a minimum threshold to submit a declaration instead of undergoing inspection.\nThere is little concern the Saudis are trying to make nuclear arms, but diplomats accredited to the meeting said Riyadh's resistance to inspections were disconcerting at a time of increased fears countries or terrorists might be interested in acquiring such weapons.\nThe Saudis insist they have no plans to develop nuclear arms.\nAs such, they qualify for the protocol, which has been implemented by 75 nations, most of them small and in politically stable parts of the world and which puts the onus on the nations to truthfully report that they have nothing to inspect.\nThe timing of the deal for the Saudis comes amid persistent tensions in the Middle East and concern about Iran's nuclear ambitions. It also coincides with an agency push to tighten or rescind the protocol, as suggested in a confidential IAEA document prepared for the board and also made available to AP on Tuesday.\nWhile the Saudi government insists it has no interest in nuclear arms, in the past two decades it has been linked to prewar Iraq's nuclear program and to the Pakistani nuclear black marketeer A.Q. Khan. It also has expressed interest in Pakistani missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads, and Saudi officials reportedly discussed pursuing the nuclear option as a deterrent in the volatile Middle East.\nThe Saudis have resisted pressure from the United States, the European Union and Australia to either back away from the small quantities protocol or agree to inspections, as reflected by a confidential EU briefing memo given to the AP earlier this week by a diplomat accredited to the agency who insisted on anonymity because he was not authorized to release it.
(10/13/04 4:14am)
VIENNA, Austria -- Reconsidering its hard line on Iran, the United States is weighing the idea of rewarding the Islamic republic if it gives up technology that can be used for nuclear arms, diplomats and U.S. officials said Tuesday.\nThe diplomats, who spoke to The Associated Press from Vienna and another European capital, said senior European negotiators directly answerable to their foreign ministers planned to go to Washington this week for discussions with top U.S. State Department officials on a common Iran strategy.\n"Discussions are ongoing between the Americans and the Europeans on how to address the nuclear question in Iran," a diplomat said.\nIranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi assured European governments Tuesday in Tehran that his country would never produce nuclear bombs if Tehran's right to enrich uranium was recognized.\n"The time has come for Europe to take a step forward and suggest that our legitimate right for complete use of nuclear energy is recognized (in return for) assurances that our program will not be diverted toward weapons," Kharrazi said.\nThe offer, which came about six weeks before Iran has to show the U.N. nuclear watchdog that it has ceased enrichment and all related activities, was brushed aside by a senior U.S. official in Washington.\nThe official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the Bush administration was prepared to consider with the Europeans a package of incentives.\nThe package of incentives will be discussed at a meeting Friday at the State Department by European envoys with Under Secretary of State John R. Bolton and either Secretary of State Colin Powell or Deputy Secretary Richard Armitage, a U.S. official said.\nIncentives could include access to imported nuclear fuel, but the two U.S. officials said that while the administration was interested in proposing a package of incentives, none of its parts had received U.S. endorsement.\nCooperating with Europe on incentives to Iran would represent a shift in Bush administration strategy and could have significant implications in the presidential race. Democratic candidate John Kerry has criticized the administration for what he calls insufficient cooperation with allied governments in shaping U.S. foreign policy.\nPresident George W. Bush has responded that he works with allied governments whenever possible.\nThe European diplomats, who spoke on condition of anonymity, emphasized that the talks were still at an initial stage. They also said the United States was holding onto its option of pushing for U.N. Security Council action against Iran if it is found in defiance of international demands to stop all activities related to uranium enrichment.\nFor more than a year, the United States has pushed other nations at board meetings of the International Atomic Energy Agency to find Iran in violation of the Treaty on the Non-proliferation of Nuclear Weapons and refer it to the Security Council, which could impose sanctions. Its attempts foundered due to resistance from other members of the 35-nation IAEA board of governors.\nThe new strategy, disclosed by the diplomats, appeared in part prompted by recognition that Washington could again fall short of support at the next board meeting in Vienna in November.\nUranium enrichment can be used to generate power or make nuclear warheads. The Americans insist the Iranians are hiding a secret weapons program.\nThe Americans have in the past said they welcomed attempts by France, Britain and Germany to get Iran to shelve plans to enrich in exchange for pledges to help Tehran develop its peaceful nuclear program.\nOne of the diplomats said the Americans now are more actively involved in planning the package.\n"I think they are speaking less about sanctions and how to move the process forward," said the diplomat, who is familiar with the talks.
(03/12/04 5:20am)
VIENNA, Austria -- Closing the books on Libya, a key U.N. atomic agency meeting turned to Iran Thursday as it debated how harshly to censure Tehran, Iran for failing to fully expose its nuclear activities and dispel suspicions it wanted to make weapons.\nThe United States has compromised with Britain, France and Germany on a draft resolution that toned down criticism of Iran's continued nuclear secrecy and offered some praise of Tehran's record in opening activities to outside perusal.\nBut European diplomats said they were hopeful the final version to be adopted by the board of governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency would be even less critical.\n"We think the Americans are putting a lot of pressure on Europe," a European diplomat said on condition of anonymity.\nPirouz Hosseini, Iran's chief delegate, said most of the board -- "including probably Russia and China" -- opposes the "tough language" in the draft. He did not elaborate, and delegates from those countries would not comment.\nOrganizers said the next full session of the conference was postponed until Friday to give delegates time to meet informally and shape a resolution all could agree on.\nThe current draft is not as tough as Washington, D.C. would have liked, a U.S. official told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.\n"But it deplores Iran's behavior, and it notes with serious concern that what Iran said ... did not amount to the correct and full picture of their past and present nuclear program," the official said.\nThe United States, which insists the Islamic republic has a nuclear arms program, has held up the example of Libya as a nation whose openness has reaped international rewards. The IAEA board passed a resolution Wednesday praising Tripoli, Libya for scrapping its nuclear weapons.\n"A country that truly comes clean with the agency and truly cooperates ... gets a constructive response," chief U.S. delegate Kenneth Brill said Wednesday. "Countries that seek to avoid providing the kind of cooperation that Libya has continue to be the subjects of intensified ... scrutiny."\nIran asserts its nuclear programs are peaceful and has promised to cooperate with IAEA inspectors to dispel suspicions prompted by revelations last year that traces of uranium enriched to 90 percent, or weapons grade, had been found in the country.\nHowever, new discoveries by IAEA inspectors of undeclared items and programs have cast doubt on Tehran's assertions it has no more nuclear secrets. Inspectors found Tehran had plans to enrich uranium and had secretly conducted other tests with possible weapons applications.\nThe United States, along with Canada and Australia, wants strong condemnation of Iran. But the Europeans and nonaligned nations at the meeting seek to focus more on Tehran's cooperation with the U.N. atomic agency.\nAn IAEA report last month accused Tehran of hiding evidence of nuclear experiments and noted the discovery of traces of radioactive polonium, which can be used in nuclear weapons. The report also expressed concern about the discovery of a previously undisclosed advanced P-2 centrifuge system for processing uranium.\nIran asserts its now-suspended enrichment plans are geared only toward generating power. But Wednesday, Iran announced plans to resume enrichment.
(02/13/04 5:21am)
VIENNA, Austria -- U.N. inspectors sifting through Iran's nuclear files have discovered drawings of high-tech equipment that can be used to make weapons-grade uranium -- a new link to the black market headed by the father of Pakistan's atomic bomb -- diplomats said Thursday.\nBeyond adding another piece to the puzzle of who provided what in the clandestine supply chain headed by Abdul Qadeer Khan, the revelations cast fresh doubt on Iran's commitment to dispelling suspicions it is trying to make atomic arms. But Iran insisted Thursday it was cooperating.\nThe diplomats, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the designs were of a P-2 centrifuge -- more advanced than the P-1 model Iran has acknowledged using to enrich uranium for what is says are peaceful purposes. They said preliminary investigations by inspectors working for the International Atomic Energy Agency indicated they matched drawings of equipment found in Libya and supplied by Khan's network.\nWhile highly enriched uranium is a key component of some nuclear warheads, less enriched uranium can be used to generate power, which is what Iran says it was interested in.\nThe diplomats said Iran did not volunteer the designs -- despite pledging last year to replace nearly two decades of secrecy with full openness about all aspects of its nuclear activities. Instead, they said, IAEA inspectors had to dig for them.\n"Coming up with them is an example of real good inspector work," one of the diplomats told The Associated Press. "They took information and put it together and put something in front of them that they can't deny."\nThe diplomats said Iran had not yet formally explained why the advanced centrifuge designs were not voluntarily handed over to the agency.\nStill, the diplomats emphasized that, despite putting into question Iran's pledge to be fully open, the find did not advance suspicions that Tehran was trying to make nuclear weapons.\nThe United States and others accuse Iran of having nuclear weapons ambitions. Iran agreed to end nearly two decades of nuclear secrecy late last year but only under intense international pressure generated by the discovery of its enrichment program.\n"We're not convinced Iran has come completely clean," Undersecretary of State John R. Bolton told a security conference in Berlin. "There is no doubt in our minds that Iran continues to pursue nuclear weapons. They have not complied even with the commitment they made in October."\nIn Rome, Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi denied Tehran had any nuclear weapons ambitions.\n"We do not have anything to hide, and we are ready to be inspected more (seriously) by IAEA inspectors," Kharrazi told reporters on the sidelines of a conference celebrating 50 years of Vatican-Iranian relations.\n"There may be questions by IAEA inspectors, but we are ready to verify those, and what has been achieved altogether up until now is out of our cooperation with IAEA," Kharrazi said in English when asked about the discovery of the drawings. "As long as we are ready to continue our cooperation, all outstanding questions will be verified."\nBut the Vatican issued a stern message on nuclear weapons during Kharrazi's visit, with Pope John Paul II urging Tehran to continue cooperating with U.N. inspectors and his foreign minister warning the pursuit of such weapons only multiplies conflicts.\nOn Wednesday, President Bush acknowledged loopholes in the international enforcement system and urged the United Nations and member states to draft criminal penalties for nuclear trafficking.\nWhile accusing Khan of being the mastermind of a clandestine nuclear supply operation, Bush avoided criticism of the Pakistani government, a key ally in the fight against terror. Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf says his government knew nothing of Khan's network, even though his military controlled the nation's nuclear program.\nKhan, a national hero in Pakistan for creating a nuclear deterrent against archrival India, confessed on Pakistani television last week to masterminding a network that supplied Libya, Iran and North Korea with nuclear technology. Musharraf then pardoned him.\nIn a speech Thursday, Musharraf said help with nuclear proliferation had come from different countries -- not just Pakistan.\n"But things happened from here also, and we need to correct our house," he said. "We are a responsible nation. We must not proliferate."\nEarlier this year, Libya handed over engineers' drawings of a crude nuclear warhead linked to Khan as part of its decision to scrap all programs aimed at making weapons of mass destruction.\nMalaysia pledged Thursday to share information with Washington from its investigation of B.S.A. Tahir, a man Bush described as a major player in the trafficking network. But top Malaysian officials insisted the sole known case of Malaysian involvement was the unwitting manufacture of parts seized en route to Libya last year.\nAlso Thursday, China declared it had a "common interest" with Washington in halting illicit arms trafficking. Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Zhang Qiyue said Beijing would take "effective measures" to enforce rules against exports of weapons technology by Chinese companies.\nIn Moscow, Russian nuclear energy Minister Alexander Rumyantsev postponed a trip to Iran next week because the countries have not nailed down agreements involving a reactor Russia is building. Russia has been under pressure to freeze the $800 million deal with Washington, saying the facility could help Iran develop weapons.
(01/09/02 4:16am)
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- President Pervez Musharraf is close to unveiling a "bold and principled" initiative aimed at easing the threat of war with India, U.S. senators said Tuesday.\nSpeaking after meeting the Pakistani leader, the visiting nine-member delegation also said the United States was prepared for a long-term commitment to the region as part of its global anti-terror campaign.\nThe United States and its allies have been trying to get the two neighbors to step back from their latest confrontation, which began Dec. 13 with a suicide attack on India\'s Parliament by suspected Muslim militants.\nIndia says the guerrillas -- along with others who attacked its Kashmir state legislature Oct. 1 -- were backed by Pakistan. Musharraf denies that. Both the nuclear-armed neighbors have sent tens of thousands of troops to their shared frontier in disputed Kashmir.\nIn Kashmir, hostilities persisted Tuesday. Indian authorities said three suspected Islamic militants attacked an army camp in Indian-ruled Kashmir with guns and grenades, killing one soldier. They said two attackers were slain.\nSen. Joseph Lieberman urged President Bush to "seize the moment of both crisis and opportunity" by sending an envoy to negotiate an end to the dispute.\nHe praised Pakistan' support of America's anti-terrorism campaign in Afghanistan and said Musharraf wants to recreate his country as a "nation with a majority Muslim population that will be tolerant and moderate and modern" -- an example to the rest of the Muslim world.\nMuslim Pakistan and Hindu-majority India have twice gone to war over Kashmir, the mostly Muslim region divided between them after the subcontinent gained independence from Britain in 1947.