By Anne Penketh, UK's Independent Online
and
Iran 'kept EU talking' while it finished nuclear plant
By Colin Freeman, The London Telegraph
Two headlines, two conflicting stories on the same subject, published on the same day.
Ms. Penketh leads off with references to Bush's second confirmation that "all options are on the table" when it comes to dealing with Iran and any WMD's, while gleefully reporting that al Baradei prepares a report that the damning traces of uranium have been analyzed and appear to be Pakistani in origin.
The new information, which strengthens Iran's case after last week's contentious IAEA board meeting in Vienna, will be a central part of the next report to the board by Mohamed ElBaradei, the IAEA chief. "The biggest single issue of the past two years has now fallen in their [the Iranians'] favour," the diplomat said.
If we are to believe there is even a thread of old journalistic training in today's MSM reporters, the lead paragraphs in the Independent contain the crux of the story... which, according to Ms. Penketh, is not the status of Iran's WMD programme. Instead her headline and lead graphs are feeble attempts to take the US President's "no options..." words and portray him as a war monger determined to ignore "the truth".The UN nuclear watchdog is preparing to publish evidence that Iran is not engaged in a nuclear weapons programme, undermining a warning of possible military action from President George Bush.
The US President told Israeli television that "all options are on the table" if Iran fails to comply with international calls to halt its nuclear programme. Both the US and Israel - the Middle East's only nuclear-armed power - were "united in our objective to make sure Iran does not have a weapon", he said.
Contrast this side by side with a second story from the Telegraph. Evidently there is one Irani mouthpiece who can't resist strutting Iran's nuclear stuff in the wake of the 4-party talks and the IAEA's investigation.
An Iranian foreign policy official has boasted that the regime bought extra time over its stalled negotiations with Europe to complete a uranium conversion plant.
In comments that will infuriate EU diplomats, Hosein Musavian said that Teheran took advantage of the nine months of talks, which collapsed last week, to finish work at its Isfahan enrichment facility.
"Thanks to the negotiations with Europe we gained another year in which we completed the [project] in Isfahan," he told an Iranian television interviewer.
Mr Musavian also claimed that work on nuclear centrifuges at a plant at Natanz, which was kept secret until Iran's exiled opposition revealed its existence in 2002, progressed during the negotiations.
"We needed six to 12 months to complete the work on the centrifuges," said Mr Musavian, chairman of the Iranian Supreme National Security Council's foreign policy committee. He made his remarks on August 4 - two days before Iran's foreign ministry rejected the European Union offer of incentives to abandon its uranium enrichment programme.
snip
"The IAEA give us a 50-day extension to suspend the enrichment and all related activities," he said. "But thanks to the negotiations with Europe we gained another year, in which we completed the [project] in Isfahan."
The plant, about 250 miles south of Teheran, carries out an early stage of the cycle for developing nuclear fuel, turning yellowcake into UF4 and then into UF6, a gas essential to enrichment.
"Today, we are in a position of power," Mr Musavian said. "Isfahan is complete and has a stockpile of products." Mr Musavian also said that Iran had further benefited from sweeteners offered by the EU, including the invitation to enter talks on Iran joining the World Trade Organisation
Which story is to be believed? Could it be the UK, France and Germany have been deliberately deceived to buy time while negotiating in good faith? Is Irani leadership capable of keeping the right hand busy while steadily carrying on with the left behind their back?
Or should the int'l community just accept El Baradei's report as gospel, ignoring the smirks eminating from Iran.
To cap off the delicious absurdity of these dueling stories, the Independent also carried a story by CNN's Chris Cramer touting Shock finding: the public decides that it can trust us
Trust them to do what? Me thinks they spoke too soon...
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