(Refiles to clarify in first paragraph talks due this week)
* Western powers see staggered approach as more promising
* Israel won’t seek mutual deterrence with nuclear Iran
By Dan Williams
JERUSALEM, April 8 (Reuters) – Israel has signalled it would
accept, as a first priority, world powers focusing on persuading
Iran to stop higher-level uranium enrichment when they resume
stalled nuclear negotiations this week with Tehran.
Israel, which has threatened last-resort attacks on its
arch-foe’s nuclear facilities if diplomacy fails, demanded last
month that any negotiated resolution should end all uranium
enrichment, high and low level, and remove all fuel already
stockpiled by Iran.
But Western diplomats have said the six powers – the United
States, Britain, France, Russia, China and Germany – that are
due to open new talks with Iran on Friday would first tackle its
uranium refinement to a fissile concentration of 20 percent
rather than its more abundant 3.5 percent-pure fuel. The two
sides have not yet agreed where the talks will take
place.
The 20 percent enriched uranium would be far easier to
enrich to bomb-grade 90 percent purity, though Iran denies
having such designs, saying it is only seeking electrical energy
and medical isotopes.
“We told our American friends, as well as the Europeans,
that we would have expected the threshold for successful
negotiations to be clear, namely that the P5+1 will demand
clearly that – no more enrichment to 20 percent,” Barak said in
an interview with CNN’s Fareed Zakaria GPS to be aired on
Sunday.
Iran’s stocks of 20 percent-pure uranium should be removed
“to a neighbouring, trusted country”, Barak said, according to
an advance transcript of the interview.
Iran says it has a sovereign right to peaceful nuclear
technology and has repeatedly rejected U.N. resolutions calling
for a suspension of all uranium enrichment.
But it has at times appeared more flexible regarding 20
percent enrichment, which it began in early 2010, and some
experts say that initially getting Iran to stop this
higher-grade work could open a way to ease the deadlock.
Asked about Barak’s comments to CNN, another Israeli
official confirmed that the Netanyahu government was focusing
lobbying efforts on Iran’s 20-percent pure uranium but said the
long-term goal remained the ending all of its enrichment work.
“The understanding that has emerged in our contacts with the
powers is that there should be a staggered approach,” the
official told Reuters on condition of anonymity.
COUNTDOWN ON ISRAELI DECISION
Western diplomats have similarly stressed that an initial
focus on 20 percent enrichment should not be seen as
“legitimising” lower-level work as the U.N. Security Council has
demanded a full suspension.
Iran has enough 3.5 and 20 percent-enriched uranium for
around four bombs if refined further, Western experts say.
Barak’s remarks dovetailed with what the New York Times said
on Saturday would be submitted to Iran by the United States and
other Western nations in the upcoming talks.
According to the report, the world powers, which have ramped
up sanctions against Iran, also plan to press it to close and
ultimately dismantle a recently completed enrichment bunker in a
mountain near Qom – another demand levelled by the Israelis.
Israel’s Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper said Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu presented U.S. President Barack Obama last
month with propositions for an Iran deal that included allowing
limited operations at its main enrichment facility at Natanz.
Netanyahu’s office had no comment on the Yedioth report.
Many analysts believe it may be unrealistic to demand that
Iran suspend all enrichment as its leaders have invested so much
national and personal prestige in the project.
In return for allowing limited, low-level enrichment, those
analysts argue, Iran would need to accept much more intrusive
U.N. inspections to make sure there is no military diversion.
Widely assumed to have the Middle East’s only atomic
arsenal, Israel considers a nuclear-armed Iran would be a mortal
threat.
“We don’t have to make a decision next week, and we cannot
wait years, though,” Barak said in the CNN interview when asked
about the prospect of an Israeli pre-emptive attack. “We don’t
have any decision about what to do or a date for (a) decision.”
He dismissed speculation that Israel might settle for a Cold
War-style nuclear deterrence with the Iranians if they get the
bomb.
“No mutually assured destruction kind of situation … will
serve as a modifier or stabiliser in this case, because we are
not continents, and Israel is not either the United States or
the Soviet Union,” Barak said.
(Writing by Dan Williams; Editing by Will Waterman)
