EU goes with minimum sanctions on Iran

Reuters/NY Times:

The European Union agreed on Monday to implement U.N. sanctions on Iran while holding the door open to new talks with Tehran.

Officials said the sanctions would strictly follow measures listed in a United Nations resolution in December, meant to try to force Iran to suspend efforts to make nuclear fuel that the West suspects is aimed at producing atomic bombs.

Diplomats said the EU measures would include travel bans on Iranian nuclear officials and call on states to prevent Iranian nationals from studying sensitive technologies on their soil.

But European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana, who reopened tentative contacts with Iran at a security conference in Germany on Sunday, said fresh talks were also a possibility.

``We want to maintain dialogue and Iran knows what we want to do,'' he told reporters as he arrived for a session of EU foreign ministers in Brussels.

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Talking with Iran is worse than talking to a fence post. At least you know the fence post is not going to do anything. The Iranians use the talks as a stalling device to buy time for weapons productions. They bargain in bad faith at best. Since 1979 talks with Iranians have only led to a worse situation for the west and you would think that people would catch on by now, but the Euros in particular have a talking fetish and have fooled themselves into thinking they can find common ground with a bunch of religious bigots bent on world domination.