Word: lavrov
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...State Condoleezza Rice personally working the phones, and ceding a little ground, to seal the deal - which gave Iran 30 days to suspend its uranium enrichment activities or face as yet unspecified consequences. In the last several days, Rice has spoken to her counterpart, Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov, on a number of occasions, to try and bridge the gap. On the last phone call Wednesday morning, state department officials said, Rice agreed to ask the British to strike a line from their draft statement suggesting that Iran?s rogue behavior might constitute a "threat to international peace and security...
...While that may seem like mere semantics, in diplomatic parlance the phrase has a very specific - and to the Russians ominous - meaning; it echoes the U.N. charter and, in Lavrov's mind, could potentially serve as a precedent for subjecting Iran to punitive economic and political sanctions, which the U.S. supports and Russia adamantly opposes...
...Lavrov, however, also made concessions. The British draft called for Mohamed El Baradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, to report to the Security Council on Iran?s compliance or lack thereof. The Russians wanted El Baradei to report to the IAEA, but Rice and European officials said this would kick the Iran problem out of the Security Council and back to a weaker agency. The compromise, hammered out by Rice and Lavrov, called for El Baradei to report to both the Security Council and the IAEA...
...While Rice was able to convince her Russian counterpart to sign on to the more mild rebuke, it quickly became clear that he would not be nearly as amenable to tougher penalties. "In principle Russia does not believe that sanctions could achieve the purposes of settlement of various issues," Lavrov declared. In fact, Lavrov said, the IAEA should do more investigation before concluding that Iran is in fact trying to develop a nuclear weapons capability under the cover of its civilian power reactor program. "Before we call any situation a threat," Lavrov said with evident skepticism of the West...
...Lavrov was not alone in pushing a continued go-slow approach. Chinese Deputy Foreign Minister Dai Bingguo made an effort to distance himself and his government from the U.S. - European strategy as well. The confrontation with Iran, he said, "can only be resolved through peaceful means. The Chinese side feels that there has already been enough turmoil in the Middle East...