UN nuclear team in Tehran on three-day mission

TEHRAN: UN atomic watchdog officials began a visit to Iran on Sunday to discuss Tehran’s suspect nuclear drive, as Iranian lawmakers held off retaliatory action against a looming EU oil embargo.

The three-day International Atomic Energy Agency mission is to address evidence suggesting Iran’s activities including nuclear weapons research.

“In particular we hope that Iran will engage with us on the possible military dimensions of Iran’s nuclear programme,” Herman Nackaerts, the IAEA’s chief inspector leading the delegation, told reporters in Vienna as he left.

“We are looking forward to the start of a dialogue, a dialogue that is overdue since very long.”

Iran’s parliamentary speaker, Ali Larijani, called the visit a ‘test’ for the UN agency, according to the website of the official IRIB state broadcaster.

If the IAEA officials were ‘professional’, then “the path for cooperation will open up”, he said.

“But if they deviate and become a tool (of the West), then the Islamic republic will be forced to reflect and consider a new framework” for cooperation, Mr Larijani added.

Iran’s Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi welcomed the visit.

“I’m hopeful and very optimistic about this trip of the high delegation of the IAEA to Iran,” he told reporters in Addis Ababa, where he was attending an African Union summit.

“Right from the beginning we have indicated explicitly, expressed explicitly, that Iran is never, ever after nuclear weapons,” he said.

Iran, which maintains its programme is exclusively for peaceful purposes, is increasingly furious at western measures aimed at making it halt uranium enrichment.

It has defiantly stepped up enrichment at a new bomb-proof bunker in Fordo near the holy city of Qom.

It has also reacted fiercely to new sanctions targeting its oil and finance sectors, notably the European Union’s announcement of a ban on all Iranian oil imports within the next five months.

But Iranian lawmakers on Sunday delayed taking action on a proposed bill to immediately cut oil exports to Europe in retaliation for the EU embargo.

“No bill has been designed nor has it come to the parliament,” energy commission spokesman Emad Hosseini told Mehr news agency, adding he hoped negotiations on preparing the bill would be finalised before Friday.

German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle told Welt am Sonntag newspaper the EU was resolute on preventing Iran from “acquiring an atomic weapon.”

“We will find ways in the EU to compensate for delivery stoppages” of oil, he said.

Iran, Opec’s second-biggest producer, has repeatedly brandished threats to use oil as a weapon if it is backed up against the wall.

Officials have warned they could even close the Strait of Hormuz, a chokepoint at the entrance to the Gulf, in a move analysts say could send oil prices soaring by 50 per cent.

Saudi Arabia has promised to make up for any shortfall should Iranian oil be curbed, but it too depends on the strait.

The United States, which has called any attempt to close the strait a ‘red line’ not to be crossed, is reportedly planning to send a large floating base for commando teams to the Middle East.

It already has two aircraft carrier groups in and near the Gulf, and has broadened arms deals to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.—AFP

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Pentagon clarifies Panetta’s remarks

WASHINGTON: The United States still believes that Pakistani officials were unaware about the presence of Osama bin Laden’s hideout in Abbottabad, says the Pentagon while commenting on Secretary of Defence Leon Panetta’s statement that somebody “somewhere probably had that knowledge”.

Pentagon Press Secretary George Little said the interview, which quoted Mr Panetta as making this claim was old and the US was uncertain about the presence of Osama in Pakistan at the time of the interview.

“Secretary Panetta made clear his belief — which other senior US officials have also expressed — that Osama bin Laden had some kind of support network within Pakistan,” Mr Little said.

“The secretary indicated in the same interview that he had seen no evidence that Bin Laden was supported by the Pakistani government or that senior Pakistani officials knew he was hiding in the Abbottabad compound. Since the Bin Laden operation, Secretary Panetta and his colleagues in the government have been working hard to improve US-Pakistani relations.”

Diplomatic observers in Washington, however, see Mr Panetta’s interview against the backdrop of the ongoing tensions between the United States and Pakistan.

They believe that both countries are entering a decisive phase for redefining their relations after months of tensions, which started with the May 2 US raid on Bin Laden’s compound and reached unprecedented heights with the November 26 Nato strike that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers in Mohmand.

Pakistan’s new ambassador to the United States, Sherry Rehman, also hinted at this in her first address to the Pakistani-American community this weekend.

“A comprehensive parliamentary review, now in its final phase, will establish new principles for this relationship, resetting the bilateral relationship in a transparent, consistent and predictable manner,” she said.

“The Pakistani government is involved in an internal review of its relations with the United States, and we will wait for them to complete this process,” said US State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland while stressing that Washington wanted to rebuild a strong relationship with Islamabad, “which is beneficial to both”.

Diplomatic observers in Washington believe that both sides are now spelling out various issues they want settled before a final framework for the new relationship is defined.

They point out that in the same interview in which Mr Panetta discussed the support network that Osama bin Laden might have had in Pakistan, he also emphasised that Islamabad would “ultimately” have to release Dr Shakil Afridi, a physician who helped the CIA trace the Al Qaeda chief.

“Dr Afridi’s release may be part of the demands the United States would like to be met before a new relationship is finalised,” said a diplomatic observer, “or he may be a bargaining chip for something bigger. We do not know yet”.

Ambassador Rehman, however, did not get into “details” discussed in Washington’s diplomatic circles.

Instead, she stressed an important point that she spoke as a representative of “one united government” including the country’s defence establishment.

“The elected government will stand firm in its resolve to protect our military, when our soldiers are martyred in the line of duty, as they were on the border post of Salala (on Nov 26,) which has triggered a review in our relationship,” she said.

This surprised many in the audience who were not used to seeing the Pakistani ambassador defend the country’s armed forces.

“What we are doing here is to tell our American friends that our future relationship will look after the interests of all government institutions, including the armed forces,” the diplomat said.

“We want to remain friends with the United States and we want a strong relationship that is equal, sovereign, based on mutual respect and shared values,” Ambassador Rehman explained.

She said she had not come to Washington with a grievance narrative, but to explain Pakistan’s desire to become economic and political partner of the United States and not just a battlefield ally.

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Panetta believes Pakistan knew Osama hideout

WASHINGTON: US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta is acknowledging publicly for the first time that a Pakistani doctor provided key information to the US in advance of the successful Navy SEAL assault on Osama bin Laden’s compound last May.

Panetta told CBS’s ”60 Minutes,” in a profile to be broadcast on Sunday, that Shakil Afridi helped provide intelligence for the raid on bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad.

Afridi ran a vaccination program for the CIA to collect DNA and verify bin Laden’s presence in the compound. He has since been charged by Pakistan with treason. Panetta said he is ”very concerned” for the doctor.

Panetta still believes someone in authority in Pakistan knew where Osama bin Laden was hiding before US forces went in to find him.

Intelligence reports found Pakistani military helicopters had passed over the compound in Abbottabad where US Navy SEALs discovered and killed bin Laden last year, according to excerpts of Panetta’s interview.

“I personally have always felt that somebody must have had some sense of what was happening at this compound. Don’t forget, this compound had 18-foot walls… It was the largest compound in the area.

“So you would have thought that somebody would have asked the question, ‘What the hell’s going on there?’” Panetta told CBS.

The Pentagon chief said that concern played a significant factor in Washington not warning Pakistani officials of the impending raid: “It concerned us that, if we, in fact, brought (Pakistan) into it, that — they might…give bin Laden a heads up,” he said.

Panetta acknowledged he did not have “hard evidence” Pakistan knew of the Al-Qaeda leader’s whereabouts.

US Navy SEALs killed Bin Laden on May 2 in a raid on a compound in the Pakistani garrison town of Abbottabad, north of Islamabad, and later buried the 9/11 mastermind at sea.

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