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Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia
US warns Russia over aid to Iran - naughty naughty naughty.
2006-04-20
A senior US official has called on Russia to stop helping Iran build its first civilian nuclear power station. After talks in Moscow to discuss Iran's nuclear programme, US envoy Nicholas Burns said other nations should not help Iran, even on civilian projects.

The tension between the US and Russia comes despite attempts to present a united front to Iran. Tehran has defied UN calls to stop nuclear activity, saying last week it had successfully enriched uranium. Enriched uranium can be used as fuel in a nuclear plant, or, when highly refined, in a nuclear weapon.
Iran insists its nuclear programme is for peaceful power generation only, while the US and other Western countries believe it is running a covert weapons programme.

Russia's engagement with Iran's nuclear programme has been a source of friction between Moscow and Washington for many years, says the BBC's Russian affairs analyst Steven Eke. US officials believe it has helped bolster Iranian nuclear know-how. Mined uranium ore is purified and reconstituted into solid form known as yellowcake. "We... think it is important for countries to stop cooperation with Iran on nuclear issues, even on civilian nuclear issues like the Bushehr facility," said Mr Burns, the US undersecretary of state, referring to Iran's first atomic power station in the south of the country.

Russia's impatience with Iran is increasingly visible, says our correspondent, but even so Moscow will not welcome this American intervention. Russia says it has always maintained adequate safeguards and international oversight would be in place to prevent the diversion of sensitive technologies. It is also reluctant to do anything that might damage its relationship with Iran, our correspondent says. The US wants the UN to authorise more robust action against Iran over its nuclear programme, including sanctions. Moscow has limited itself so far to joining Western calls for Iran to suspend all uranium enrichment.

During the latest talks between major powers in Moscow, moreover, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov appeared to specifically rule out discussion of sanctions until the publication of a key report from the head of the UN's nuclear watchdog at the end of April. In a rare public intervention, General Yuri Baluyevsky, head of the Russian armed forces, suggested there was mounting dissatisfaction with the increasing US pressure for action against Iran. He stated that Russia would remain strictly neutral in the event of US military action against Iran, but he pledged that Moscow would go ahead with the planned sale of an advanced air-defence system to Tehran.

That provoked a riposte from Mr Burns, who said: "No country should sell weapons to a regime like that."
Posted by:Besoeker

#15  Will say again GWOT > various rogue crises and Radical Islam, etal. are diversionary, albeit bloody, PC sideshows for the real battlefield that is in Washington DC and the NPE, i.e. vv "CREEPING/GRADUAL SOCIALISM-COMMUNISM". All sodes know that places like Iran and North Korea and Taiwan, etc. are geopol "lines of demarcation" = lines in sand = "Neutral Zones" where EAST-WEST, SOCIALIST-CAPITALIST confrontations are highest - IS PARTLY WHY MADMOUD AND KIMMIE ARE BEING SO WILFULLY REGIONALLY NOW GLOBALLY BELLIGERENT. VV Nukes and Empire > the Radicals + Anarchists, etc want the superior Western/First World democracies to unilaterally and unconditionally acknowledge and justify their failed and failing ideos - iff not, they're gonna wilfully break something i.e. take everybody with them to hell, darkness and chaos. Unless something changes, Americans are looking at minima REGIONAL IRAN-CENTRIC EMPIRE OR NEAR-PSEUDO-EMPIRE within the lifetimes of the present adult generations - in EAST ASIA-PACRIM, whom here doubts that any surreal REGIONAL? "NORTH KOREAN EMPIRE" is in reality a disguised/shadow CHICOM EMPIRE. Are Americans willing to risk short-term war, including potential LIMITED NUKE WAR, in exchange for superficial, i.e. fake, longer-term "peace". ONCE IRAN GETS ITS NUKES, ANDOR THE USA FAILS TO STOP OR PREVENT CHINA FROM FORCIBLY TAKING OVER TAIWAN, FAKE PEACE IS DE FACTO ALL AMERICANS WILL HAVE LEFT CUZ INEVITABLY IT'LL BE OUR TURN SOON ENOUGH TO TO BE CONQUERED OR DESTROYED. Remember, the Rogues job between now and 2015-2020 is too support domestic American Anti-American efforts towards the PC destabilization and fractionalism of Fascist SOCIALIST America vv making things so-o-o expensive for Washington as to induce = force the US Fed to expand and unilaterally take over everything and anything domestically, in the name of personal, local and national safety, security, accountability, fairness and protection in wartime = peacetime. The DemoLeft > has no probs with FASCIST ALL-POWERFUL HYPERPOWER AMERICA WARS AROUND THE GLOBE vv 9-11 and 3000 dead as long as a COMMUNIST, WEAK, AMERIKAN SOVIETIZED/
STALINIZED, GLOBAL SOCIALIST STATE REPUBLIC UNDER OWG AND SWO-CWO IS THE FINAL OUTCOME "Fascist" Amerika > just the Clinton's and Left's way of saying AMERICA IS A [SSSSHHHHHH, DE FACTO]
SOCIALIST = PRE-/PSEUDO-COMMUNIST NATION - God help us all, the Lefties and Commies in Socialist, Motherless Rightist Amerika don't know how to stop their Leftism and Communism!? Rest assured its your fault,, as everything always is, that you didn't understand what they really truly unequivocally undeniably honestly meant when they lied to you.
Posted by: JosephMendiola   2006-04-20 23:16  

#14  UN League of Nations
Posted by: Captain America   2006-04-20 22:27  

#13  " History will show the UN a joke and the US a fool for funding it. Time to turn it into a humanitarian organization and send them to feed the hungry."

Better to feed the UN career bureaucrats and parking ticket scofflaws to the Hungry ... Lions.
Posted by: doc   2006-04-20 22:12  

#12  History will show the UN a joke and the US a fool for funding it. Time to turn it into a humanitarian organization and send them to feed the hungry.
Posted by: 49 Pan   2006-04-20 21:26  

#11  Committee Vice Chair, no less.
Posted by: Chath Unomotch9056   2006-04-20 21:15  

#10   I just heard Iran was given a seat on the UN Nuclear weapons proliferation committee. Has the UN lost its last shred of credibility?

Sorry bout my horrid spelling.
Posted by: 49 Pan   2006-04-20 21:14  

#9  That's an affrimative, 49 Pan.
Posted by: Nimble Spemble   2006-04-20 21:13  

#8  I just heard Iran was given a seat on the UN Nuclear weapons poliferation committee. Has the UN lost its last shred of crediability.
Posted by: 49 Pan   2006-04-20 21:11  

#7  Funny, I have a completely different definition of "neutral".
Posted by: Angigum Crotch3713   2006-04-20 19:30  

#6  This gives me a horrid thought. If the Israelis wanted to wipe out a huge number of Iranian nuclear scientists at one or more of their critical facilities, with the idea of depriving Iran of the talent to make its nukes, there is a highly effective way of doing so.

Chemical and biological-toxin weapons.

I would recommend using a device about the size of a 1 quart can. It would contain a terribly lethal toxin or chemical, a very quiet atomizer, a battery to power the atomizer, and a timer. It could be concealed in anything, and would be totally inconspicuous.

If the toxin or chemical took a week or two before onset of symptoms, and was otherwise untreatable, the air in the facility, and the facility itself, would be so polluted that it would have to be abandoned.

That is, after everyone who had been inside the facility over a one-week period had died.

A dozen such weapons placed in a dozen different facilities could kill hundreds of their top nuclear scientists, and even more important, make every major nuclear production facility useless.
Posted by: Anonymoose   2006-04-20 19:30  

#5  Typical Ruskie commie double-speak:

"Russia would remain strictly neutral in the event of US military action against Iran" BUT "Moscow would go ahead with the planned sale of an advanced air-defence system to Tehran"
Posted by: Captain America   2006-04-20 19:28  

#4  we'll need to expose the air defense for the same level of crap as the GPS jammers in Iraq. Not good for future sales, Ivan
Posted by: Frank G   2006-04-20 19:24  

#3  You'd think they learned something from Iraq, where they had to write off billions in debt.
Posted by: phil_b   2006-04-20 18:57  

#2  And really bad credit too...
Posted by: DarthVader   2006-04-20 18:33  

#1  "No country should sell weapons to a regime like that."

Are they a slow pay?
Posted by: Nimble Spemble   2006-04-20 18:00  

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