Iran Says U.S. Trying to Sabotage Atomic Deal

Tehran’s top nuclear negotiator Thursday accused the United States of scuttling his country’s talks with Moscow on a possible deal to move some nuclear activities to Russia to assuage concerns that Iran would divert enriched uranium to make a bomb.

Ali Larijani was to sit down here today with key European foreign ministers and senior nuclear negotiators, just three days before the United Nations nuclear watchdog meets in the Austrian capital on whether to recommend sanctions to the U.N. Security Council, which has the power to impose such action.

Iran, which restarted some enrichment activities last month after a voluntary freeze, says it wants only to produce nuclear energy for civilian use.

“America is lying, trying to destroy the Russian proposal” to enrich uranium for Iran, Larijani said at a news conference in Moscow. “The Americans’ insistence on handing over the Iranian nuclear dossier to the U.N. Security Council means the destruction of the Russian proposal.”

In response to the unusually heated rhetorical assault, State Department spokesman Adam Ereli said: “If Iran has a problem with the state of affairs and the situation it finds itself in, Iran has only itself to blame.”

A diplomat familiar with the talks, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Iran had requested the meeting in Vienna.

The diplomat said Britain, France and Germany would not compromise today on their demand that Iran give up enriching uranium inside its borders.

For the meeting to be productive, a letter from the three nations’ foreign ministers said, Iran must give a clear commitment to return immediately to “full and sustained suspension of all enrichment-related ... activity.”

The letter, dated Feb. 27, also demanded that Iran recommit to allowing the U.N.’s International Atomic Energy Agency to conduct pervasive, short-notice nuclear inspections, after withdrawing such rights last month.