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UK `regrets` US disengagement with Iran

IRNA

London, Sept 11, IRNA -- The UK government has expressed regret at the
isolationist policy of the US towards Iran and says that it is trying 
to persuade Washington to adopt a dialogue with Tehran. 
"We will try to persuade the United States to encourage rather 
than disengage in the way that, regrettably, has perhaps been the 
case," Foreign Office Minister for the Middle East Baroness Symons 
said Wednesday. 
The minister told the House of Lords that there was `no secret 
about the fact that we have a different analysis of the way in which 
to encourage Iran to be part of the international community from that 
held by our friends in the United States`. 
"Where we disagree with the United States we try to persuade them 
that the role that we are adopting of engagement with Iran -- critical
engagement, certainly, but still engagement -- is a better way of 
encouraging it to comply with international norms," she said. 
Symons was responding to a debate about the UK`s response to the 
latest International Atomic Energy Agency report on Iran`s nuclear 
program, initiated by the main British apologist for the Mujahideen-e 
Khalq terrorist group, Labor peer, Lord Corbett. 
During the debate, former UK ambassador to the UN, Lord Hannay 
contrasted the concern about North Korea`s `extremely disagreeable 
regime` with the `more sophisticated government` of Iran and suggested
the US should `address some of their security concerns`. 
He asked the minister is she had `any idea what the United States 
might be prepared to do in its relationship with Iran if Iran were to 
sign the addition protocol` to the Non-Proliferation Treaty. 
In response, Symons said it was always very difficult to draw 
direct comparisons but that `nobody knows better` than Lord Hannay, 
who started his diplomatic career with the Foreign Office as a 
language student in Tehran and went to be ambassador to the EU. 
"If the Government of Iran have particular points that they wish 
to raise that are matters of genuine concern about their security, it 
is only right and proper to listen to those concerns," she added. 
Earlier when asked, the minister suggested that there was a 
`possibility` that if Iran did not cooperate with the IAEA that there 
was a `possibility` that the matter may be referred to the UN Security
Council. 
But she said that she and others `hope that Iran will do the right
and sensible thing and engage properly with these requests`. 
HC/AH/210 
End