WASHINGTON - Iran is making headway in building nuclear weapons, the Bush
administration said Monday as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice tried to iron
out differences with Russia over a UN resolution designed to stop the program
with economic sanctions.
Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad,
casts his ballot for for the Assembly of Experts, a body of 86 senior
clerics that is charged with monitoring Iran's supreme leader and choosing
his successor, in Tehran on Friday, Dec. 15, 2006. [AP]
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While not predicting when Iran would join the nuclear club, State
Department spokesman Sean McCormack said the Iranians were trying to perfect
technology to enrich uranium. Iran has denied an effort to build nuclear weapons
and says its work is for energy development.
"It's a very tricky matter of perfecting centrifuge technology so you can
actually enrich all the uranium," McCormack said. "So, yes, they are going along
their way in trying to go down the various pathways."
The spokesman provided no details of Rice's telephone conversation with
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. "They went over some of the outstanding
issues," McCormack said.
Russia, which has close economic ties with Iran, has favored diplomacy over
punitive sanctions, but the Bush administration is hoping Moscow may be prepared
to approve a watered-down resolution at the UN Security Council.
"We are hopeful that we can get a vote in the very near future. It is time
for a vote," McCormack said. "I think we need to see a vote on this in a matter
of days."
The United States and its European allies have proposed offering Iran
economic concessions in exchange for halting its enrichment of uranium, a key
part of the process of building nuclear weapons.
US and other diplomats met Monday at the United Nations in an effort to
narrow differences over a draft text.