By RIA Novosti
Washington : Five permanent members of the UN Security Council and Germany will gather in Paris Saturday to discuss tougher new sanctions against Iran over its refusal to stop uranium enrichment, the US State Department said Thursday.
The report delivered earlier this month by chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency Mohamed ElBaradei said the country has provided additional documents on its nuclear programme, but noted that Tehran was continuing with uranium enrichment.
The US and its European allies, as well as Israel, have pushed for more stringent penalties for the defiant regime, but pledged to wait until Nov 30, when EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana meets Iran’s top nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili in a last-ditch effort to persuade Iran to halt its enrichment activities.
But a senior Iranian diplomat said earlier Tehran does not intend to discuss a moratorium on uranium enrichment at talks with the 27-nation bloc in London.
“All discussions on a moratorium on uranium enrichment are over. Negotiations must continue, and the opposite side should recognize Iran’s inalienable rights in the nuclear sphere,” Iranian spokesman Gholam Hossein Elham said.
Iran insists it needs nuclear technology to produce electricity. The country also demanded that sanctions already in place should be lifted, and said that there was no justification for a new resolution following a generally positive UN nuclear watchdog report on Iran’s nuclear program.