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Iran rules out suspension of uranium enrichment program

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Iran's government spokesman said on Saturday it would not accept any new incentives, proposed by the EU and world powers, in exchange for halting its uranium enrichment program.
TEHRAN, June 14 (RIA Novosti) - Iran's government spokesman said on Saturday it would not accept any new incentives, proposed by the EU and world powers, in exchange for halting its uranium enrichment program.

Gholam-Hossein Elham told journalists "If the packet of incentives from the "six" contains demands for a suspension [of uranium enrichment], then we will not discuss it."

Elham made the announcement after EU foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, handed Iran's Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki details of a package of new incentives from the Iran six - China, France, Russia, the United States, Germany and Britain.

The Iran six are hoping the new offer will motivate Iran to start talks on halting its program in exchange for closer economic and political ties with Western nations.

Representatives from five of the six countries will also take part in the negotiations, the United States, Iran most fiercest critic, is absent after diplomatic relations were broken off in 1979.

Iran is currently under three sets of relatively mild UN Security Council sanctions for defying demands to halt uranium enrichment, which it says it needs purely for electricity generation despite Western accusations that the program is geared toward weapon production.

Iran maintains that it has never been involved in research into the development of nuclear weapons.

A report released by the U.S. intelligence community in late 2007 said that Iran had ceased attempts to create a nuclear bomb in 2003. U.S. President George Bush responded that, "Iran was dangerous, Iran is dangerous and Iran will be dangerous if they have the know how to make a nuclear weapon."

Bush told journalists after a meeting with Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin this week, that "all options are on the table" when it came to Iran's nuclear program and reiterated that Washington is not ruling out military action.

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