Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad ordered his country's atomic agency on Sunday to begin enriching uranium to a higher level, a move that is likely to deepen international suspicion over Tehran's intentions for its nuclear program.
A day earlier, Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki had told reporters after a meeting with his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, that Iran was ready to exchange its low-enriched uranium to be further processed in third countries but that Tehran had several details it still wanted to work out.
The apparent about-face in Iran coincided with a call Sunday by U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates for the international community to rally together to pressure Iran into abandoning its nuclear program. It could also force Russia to take a harder line on new sanctions after top officials said Friday and Saturday that it was hoping talks with Tehran would bring additional progress.
Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov told reporters Saturday at a security conference in Munich that any new sanctions against Iran should focus on stopping nuclear proliferation rather than targeting its economy.
"If in the future, hypothetically, if new sanctions are imposed, we are sure that sanctions should be limited to nonproliferation only and not be expanded to cultural, humanitarian and economic parts of Iranian activity," he said.
A day earlier, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in Berlin that the UN Security Council would discuss the issue if Iran fails to act constructively in the dispute.
"We confirmed that if we do not see a constructive answer from Iran, we will have to discuss this in the UN Security Council," Lavrov told reporters at a news conference with his German counterpart, Guido Westerwelle.
Iran faces a possible fourth round of Security Council sanctions because of its uranium enrichment work, which Western nations believe is designed to develop a nuclear bomb.
Tehran denies the charge and says its atomic program is only for civilian purposes.
China and Russia have tended to be more reluctant than other Security Council permanent members to further penalize Iran. But recent comments, including Lavrov's latest, indicate that Moscow may be increasingly ready to agree to sanctions.
In Washington, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said pressure from the five permanent Security Council members and Germany, the "P5+1," had helped move negotiations forward.
Lavrov also met Mottaki in Munich on Friday, and the two appeared to hit it off, Interfax reported.
Mottaki began with a joke: "There are just three enemies: alcohol, cholesterol and protocol," he said, apparently referring to Lavrov's friendly but informal greeting in the hallway where they met.
Lavrov responded that "If you discount the first two, then we've only got one common enemy: protocol," Interfax reported.
(AP, Reuters, MT)
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