Calm Is Urged in Iran Debate
BERLIN — United Nations atomic energy chief Mohamed ElBaradei urged the international community Thursday to steer away from threats of sanctions against Iran, saying the country's nuclear program was not "an imminent threat" and that the time had come to "lower the pitch" of debate.
ElBaradei's remarks at a forum in Doha, the capital of Qatar, came at a sensitive moment in the discussions over Iran, as the United States and other members of the U.N. Security Council calculate their next steps. His comments publicly expressed the dismay that many diplomats privately have voiced about what they consider an air of crisis that the Bush administration and some European governments have created with recent statements.
He spoke on the same day that ministers of major powers meeting here struck a more conciliatory tone on Iran than heard in recent weeks. The meeting followed agreement Wednesday by the U.N. Security Council to give Iran 30 days to respond to requests from the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog, that it halt uranium enrichment research.
The United States and members of the European Union have made increasingly confrontational statements about what they claim is Iran's goal of eventually manufacturing a nuclear weapon.
"There is no military solution to this situation," said ElBaradei, the Nobel Prize-winning director-general of the IAEA. "It's inconceivable. The only durable solution is a negotiated solution."
Russia and China, as well as several countries in the Middle East, have voiced concern that the U.S. and EU are pursuing tactics with Iran similar to those used in relation to Iraq a few years ago -- creating a sense of crisis that makes it easier to make the case for military action.
ElBaradei said the international community should act only on concrete information. He warned against a repetition of the 2003 experience with Iraq, when IAEA inspectors did not find signs of an active nuclear arms program but were ignored by the United States, which proceeded to use unsubstantiated intelligence to make the case for war. Since then, the IAEA has been proved right that Saddam Hussein did not possess any of the alleged weaponry.
"I work on facts," ElBaradei said in his remarks reported by Reuters news agency. "We fortunately were proven right in Iraq, we were the only ones that said at the time that Iraq did not have nuclear weapons, and I hope this time people will listen to us."
