Friday, September 04, 2009 TEHRAN: Iran said it won’t bow to international pressure to meet an end-of-September deadline for holding talks on its nuclear program. The U.S., China, Russia, France and the U.K., the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, and Germany, met near Frankfurt yesterday to discuss the offer for direct talks with Iran. “The Iranian nation favors interaction and dialogue but will not surrender to pressure,” state-run TV cited Hassan Qashqavi, the foreign ministry spokesman, as saying. He was replying to a question on how Iran will respond to the September deadline, TV said. The U.S. and its European allies suspect Iran is developing atomic weapons. They say they will seek international backing for stiffer sanctions on Iran should the Persian Gulf nation rebuff negotiations aimed at curbing its nuclear ambitions. Iran’s top negotiator, Saeed Jalili, said today his country will present updated proposals for talks next week, Agence France-Presse reported. Iran continues to enrich uranium in violation of United Nations sanctions, the International Atomic Energy Agency said in a report last month. The Vienna-based UN nuclear watchdog also said it can’t exclude the possibility that there is a military purpose to Iran’s nuclear program. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said the threat of sanctions won’t sway Iran. “No one can impose sanctions on Iran anymore,” he said at a press conference in Tehran today, as quoted by the state-run news agency. It remains unlikely that Iran is willing to make the necessary compromises on at least limiting its enrichment of uranium, said Cliff Kupchan, a senior analyst at Eurasia Group in New York. The new Iranian proposal will probably focus on Iran’s role in the international order rather than offering concrete ways to resolve the nuclear dispute, according to Samuel Ciszuk, a Middle East energy analyst for London-based business intelligence company IHS Global Insight. U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said July 27 that the U.S. will seek support for “a much tougher position” should Iran reject the deadline. Any new sanctions wouldn’t be incremental, he said on a visit to the Jordanian capital, Amman.
BAGHDAD: Nearly 500 U.S. Army combat engineers who specialize in clearing roads of explosives started shifting to southern Afghanistan."We are probably going to be the beginning of the influx you are going to see to Afghanistan," Lt. Col. Kevin Landers, commander of the Fort Carson, Colo.-based 4th Engineer Battalion, said as crews packed crates and cleaned vehicles for the flight to Kandahar.Obama has ordered 17,000 more U.S. soldiers and Marines to Afghanistan to bolster the 38,000 American troops already battling the resurgent Taliban."We are going to take this footprint out of Iraq," said Landers, whose battalion received word of its reassignment last month just after taking command of clearing roads in Baghdad of bombs and debris.
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