U.S. Says Coalition Pressuring Iran

Judith Ingram, ABC News:

A U.S. diplomat said Tuesday that the international coalition applying pressure on Iran to halt its uranium enrichment was working well. "I think we've got a truly multilateral approach in place," U.S. Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns told reporters in Moscow. "I think the momentum is with this coalition." READ MORE

Burns' comments came a few hours after the end of two days of talks between Russian and Iranian officials on the proposal to have uranium enrichment for Iran's nuclear power program carried out in Russia, to stifle the possibility that Iran could enrich uranium to a higher concentration for use in nuclear weapons.

The talks ended without visible progress. "From what we know … no new ground was broken," Burns said.

Burns was in Russia for a meeting with political directors of the member nations of the Group of Eight, of which Russia is the chairman this year. The G-8 countries "very much appreciate the constructive (approach) the Russian government has taken" on the Iran dispute, he said.

"While we didn't hear any really positive indications of Iranian change today, we are still very respectful of and supportive of the Russian government's effort," he said.

Burns reiterated the U.S. position that Iran should not be permitted to carry out its own, even limited, enrichment activities and said that was the "strong sense of the great majority of countries that are centrally involved in this."

He declined to outline the multilateral sanctions the United States would like to see applied to Iran after the U.N. Security Council takes up its case, saying the U.S. would like to discuss the options in the G-8 framework.

"Obviously, what would be more effective (than more U.S. sanctions) would be multilateral sanctions and that's why we're very interested in moving those discussions to the Security Council after the March 6 board of governors meeting in Vienna at the IAEA, simply because the Security Council is the supreme world body, it's the body with the greatest credibility…. It will be very good to have the Security Council shine a bright light on what the Iranians are doing," Burns said.