EU at one with Bush on blocking Iran nuclear ambitions

EU: THE EU has signalled it is preparing to tighten sanctions against Iran as part of co-ordinated international efforts to …

EU:THE EU has signalled it is preparing to tighten sanctions against Iran as part of co-ordinated international efforts to try to prevent it from building nuclear weapons.

At an EU-US summit in Slovenia yesterday the EU signed a joint statement calling for "additional measures" to ensure that "Iranian banks cannot abuse the international banking system to support proliferation and terrorism". It followed detailed talks between US president George Bush, EU commission president José Manuel Barroso and EU foreign affairs chief Javier Solana on Iran's nuclear programme.

"We discussed a lot of problems," Mr Bush told reporters. "We spent a lot of time on Iran. Iran with a nuclear weapon would be incredibly dangerous for world peace. They can either face isolation or they can have a better relationship with all of us."

President Bush has made restricting Iran's nuclear ambitions the priority for his week-long tour of Europe, which began yesterday in Slovenia. The International Atomic Energy Agency announced last month that Tehran had ignored demands to stop producing nuclear fuel and blocked its inspectors from looking at certain documents.

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In Slovenia President Bush did not repeat his administration's position that all options, including military action, remain on the table for dealing with Iran. "Now is the time for there to be strong diplomacy," said Mr Bush.

The EU has adopted a softer line towards Iran than the US and has been engaged in lengthy negotiations designed to persuade Tehran to give up its nuclear enrichment programme, which it claims is purely for civilian purposes. Mr Solana is due to travel to Iran this week to present new EU incentives in an attempt to persuade Tehran to comply with international obligations regarding its nuclear programme.

European external relations commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner signalled that the EU was to toughen its position. "We want to indeed show to Iranians that we mean it very seriously . . . [We are] particularly thinking of asset freezes," she told reporters.

The UN Security Council has imposed three rounds of sanctions on Iran. Washington has pressed the EU to deny Iranian banks access to the world financial system. An Iranian newspaper said yesterday Iran was withdrawing assets from European banks and converting foreign exchange assets into gold and equities to neutralise the impact of sanctions. Any decision to tighten sanctions against Iran would have to be approved by EU foreign ministers, who are due to meet in Luxembourg on Monday.

EU officials said they had now given up trying to persuade President Bush to join the EU and sign up to unilateral binding cuts in greenhouse gases to help combat climate change. President Bush repeated that the US would not agree to cuts until big developing nations such as China and India made commitments too. But he said a global climate change deal could still be reached during his presidency.

C Boyden Gray, the US ambassador to the EU, said Mr Bush hoped the outline of a multilateral deal on climate change could emerge from a meeting of G8 countries in Japan next month. The next US administration could then engage quickly in talks in 2009 for a new treaty to replace the first round of the Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012.