- AFP) -- Iran's pursuit of a nuclear capability is a "nightmare
scenario" which demands immediate international action, Israeli Foreign
Minsiter Silvan Shalom said Sunday
-
- "Iran is fast apporaching the point of no return
in its efforts to acquire nuclear weapons capability," Shalom said
here after talks with European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana
who was fresh from a visit to Tehran.
-
- "It's urgent that the international community act
to ensure that this nightmare scenario is prevented."
-
- Solana said he had urged the Islamic republic to agree
to snap inspections by the United Nations' International Atomic Energy
Agency (IAEA) in talks with Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharazi on Saturday.
-
- "We have asked the Iranian government to sign the
additional protocol as soon as poosible and to give a clear and urgent
anser to the question before the publication on September 8 of the report
of the IAEA in Vienna," said Solana.
-
- The European Union has joined the wider international
community in pressing Iran to sign an additional protocol to the nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty that would allow IAEA inspectors to descend on
its nuclear sites without warning to ensure that Tehran was not secretly
developing atomic weapons.
-
- Brussels last month warned that, without credible guarantees
over the protocol, it would review its economic ties with the country after
an IAEA report on Iran is presented in Vienna between September 8 and 11.
-
- Israel has come to regard Iran as its chief military
threat since the downfall of Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq.
-
- It warned last month said that a new ballistic missile
that was officially inaugurated by Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali
Khamenei represented a threat to the whole of the Middle East.
-
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