Brussels, 26/01/2012 (Agence Europe) - On Thursday 26 November, the president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, declared that Iran was prepared to negotiate on nuclear questions, contrary to what the West was claiming. He explained that “the West affirms that Iran is evading negotiations but this is not true”. Nonetheless, the EU is still awaiting a response from the Iranians to the letter its high representative sent the country in November. The Iranian premier added: “Why should we wish to evade negotiations?” He said that those that had rights have nothing to fear from negotiations and accused the Western powers of adopting resolutions to introduce sanctions “on the eve of the negotiations in an effort to disturb them”.
He reaffirmed that “the Iranian people will not be affected” by European sanctions and explained that “in the past, 90% of our trade was with Europe but today this figure is only 10%”. On Thursday, several parliamentarians in Iran announced that their assembly certainly was expected to examine the draft law next week to ban oil to Europe.
Criticism from China, support from Australia. China has criticised the European Union embargo and has described it as “unconstructive”. The Chinese minister for foreign affairs said that simply ratcheting up the pressure and blindly introducing sanctions and other forms of pressure is not a constructive approach. He added that China hopes that the concerned parties would resort to measures that were conducive to peace and regional stability. On Tuesday 24 January a European diplomat revealed that the EU was hoping that China (the biggest importer of Iranian oil) and India would remain neutral. This diplomatic source indicated: “We would at least like them to refrain from substituting themselves for our imports from Iran and to remain neutral.”
The Australian minister for foreign affairs, Kevin Rudd, announced on Tuesday (during a visit to London) that his country was preparing to take similar measures to those of the EU. He said that his country would not be content to simply support these measures and that it would of course do the same thing. The European diplomatic source also illustrated that the EU wanted Japan and South Korea to take similar measures to its own on Iranian oil and that “the discussions that we are having with Japan and South Korea are clearly aimed at them following our measures”. Japan has already announced that it intends to gradually move away from Iranian oil. (CG/transl.fl)