France, September 25: French President Nicolas Sarkozy said on Thursday that a December deadline must be set for Iran to show progress in talks with world powers on its suspect nuclear programme.
“There will be a deadline and in my view it’s December,” Sarkozy said when asked about the prospect of sanctions against Iran if the stalemate continues over Tehran’s nuclear activities.
France is among the six powers dealing with the nuclear dossier that will be sitting down with Iran in Geneva next week.
Tehran denies that it is seeking to develop nuclear weapons and maintains that it will instead discuss proposals to promote global nuclear disarmament at the Geneva meeting.
“Iran has the right to nuclear energy but we cannot fathom nuclear weapons in the hands of the current leaders. That is unacceptable,” said Sarkozy in an interview to French television from New York where he was attending the UN General Assembly meeting.
The United States, Israel, and other world powers suspect Tehran is making an atomic bomb under the guise of a civilian nuclear programme. The Islamic republic denies the charge.
The UN Security Council has already imposed three sets of sanctions against Iran over its refusal to freeze its uranium enrichment activities which could be used to build an atomic bomb.
—Agencies