By DPA
Berlin : Iran is continuing to work on acquiring a nuclear weapon, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Tuesday, following talks with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin.
“Nothing that we know has changed our attitudes,” Olmert told a joint press conference with Merkel towards the end of his second visit to Berlin as prime minister.
“We are certain the Iranians are engaged in a serious, and partly clandestine, operation to build an unconventional weapon,” he said.
Olmert said there could be no other reason for Iran to continue to pursue its uranium enrichment activities when it was receiving nuclear fuel from Russia for its civilian nuclear programme.
Asked whether Israel was considering a military response to the threat, the Israeli leader noted that US President George W. Bush had once said that “no options are ruled out”.
“I have nothing to add to this,” he said.
Merkel said Germany would continue its dual strategy of pressing Iran to comply with the demands of the international community on halting enrichment and of offering economic incentives if it did.
“I have said over and over again that I firmly believe in a solution by diplomatic means and that I am banking on a diplomatic solution,” the chancellor said.
Germany, along with the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, was currently working on the text of a third resolution on Iran, she noted.