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Bloomberg.com: Germany

Six Powers Hold Iran Talks as U.S. Mulls Policy

By Tony Czuczka

Feb. 4 (Bloomberg) — Diplomats from six nations discussed how to keep Iran from building nuclear weapons in the first meeting on the issue since President Barack Obama took office and offered Iran talks “without preconditions.”

U.S. Under Secretary for Political Affairs William Burns and foreign ministry officials from China, Russia, France, Britain and Germany met today in Wiesbaden, Germany, near Frankfurt, to review their strategy toward Iran, a German Foreign Ministry spokeswoman said

Iran said yesterday it launched its first domestically made satellite, prompting U.S., French and British statements of concern about Iran’s efforts to develop ballistic missile technology. Leaders of Germany and France said they may back new sanctions if diplomacy fails to halt “the Iranian threat.”

“We will not permit an Iranian nuclear bomb because this would threaten world peace,” German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy said in a joint article published today in the Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper. “We favor a diplomatic solution.”

Obama has shifted U.S. policy since taking office on Jan. 20, saying he supports “tough and direct diplomacy with Iran without preconditions” and will “use the power of American diplomacy to pressure Iran to stop their illicit nuclear program, support for terrorism and threats toward Israel.”………………..

Iran, the second-largest oil producer in the Middle East, is under three sets of UN sanctions after the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN nuclear watchdog, sent the dispute to the Security Council in March 2006.

The Bush administration ruled out talks with Iran unless the country ended uranium enrichment work within its nuclear program.

Bloomberg.com: Germany

Tags: nuclear, antinuclear, radioactive, uranium

February 5, 2009 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics