World powers to meet anew on Iran sanctions

[November 12, 2008]  WASHINGTON (AP) -- Senior diplomats from six world powers are to meet this week to discuss stalled efforts to impose new sanctions on Iran over its nuclear program, U.S. officials said Tuesday.

Thursday's meeting in Paris will bring together high-level foreign ministry officials from the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council -- Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States -- and Germany, the officials said. The U.S. will be represented by Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs William Burns, they said.

Burns is currently in Moscow for talks with senior Russian officials on Iran and other matters, including Russia's war with Georgia and U.S. plans for a missile shield in Europe that have seriously damaged ties between the former Cold War foes, the officials said.

Burns, the third-ranking official in the State Department, is the most senior official to visit Russia since the war in Georgia in August, although Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has met with Russia Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov twice since then, most recently over the weekend in Egypt.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because neither Burns' travel nor the meeting in Paris has been formally announced.

In its final months, the administration has been hitting Iran, particularly its banking and finance sectors, with a host of new U.S. sanctions over its refusal to halt suspect nuclear activity like uranium enrichment that Washington and its allies say are aimed at developing atomic weapons. Iran says the work is to produce power, not bombs.

A State Department official said Thursday's meeting had been called to look at "where we are on the incentives side and what the prospects are for any movement by the Iranians."

The official said Washington held out little hope that Iran would meet the group's demands despite the fact that the country is being increasingly affected by the sanctions that have begun to hit its economy at the same time as a precipitous drop in world oil prices.

Despite the administration's stepped-up actions and support from its European allies, they have not yet been able to convince Russia and China of the need for new United Nations sanctions on Iran. Iran is already under three sets of U.N. Security Council sanctions and efforts to pass a fourth have been stymied by Moscow and Beijing.

The six-nation group has been pursuing a so-called "dual-track strategy" to persuade Iran to give up objectionable parts of its nuclear program. It offers Iran incentives to stop enriching uranium but threatens additional sanctions if it refuses, which it has thus far done.

Late last month, the chief of the United Nation's atomic watchdog told the U.N. General Assembly that Iran is continuing to block his agency from verifying whether the nation has any ambitions for nuclear weaponry.

Last week, the foreign policy chief of the European Union, who often represents the six nations in discussions with Iran, proposed additional nuclear talks with Tehran, according to an report on Iranian television that was confirmed by the State Department official.

However, it does not appear likely that such talks, if they occur, will yield any results, especially while the transition from the Bush administration to President-elect Obama's team is still in progress, the official said.

Obama has proposed a different approach on Iran, including possible direct talks with the leadership, while insisting it remains a threat and must not be allowed to develop nuclear arms.

Iran initially welcomed Obama's election and hardline Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad congratulated him on his win -- the first time an Iranian leader has offered such wishes to a U.S. president-elect since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, which led to the severing of relations between Washington and Tehran.

But it has since taken a tougher line, saying the world needs more than cosmetic changes in American foreign policy.

Even before the election, Iran's supreme leader said that his country's hatred for the United States runs deep and differences between the two nations go beyond a "few political issues."

President Bush on Tuesday, meanwhile, signed an order extending for one year the U.S. "national emergency" with respect to Iran due to the continued "unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States constituted by the situation in Iran."

[Associated Press; By MATTHEW LEE]

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