New Delhi
7 November 2007
Agency (IAEA), visiting Israeli Interior Minister Meir Sheetrit on Wednesday said that all
that is standing between Iran and a third round of sanctions is IAEA Director General Dr
Mohamed ElBaradei.
"ElBaradei is manipulating the world. He is not doing his job. He is doing exactly vice
versa than what he should do," Mr Sheetrit said in an interview to this newspaper. "He is
dragging his feet [on the Iran issue], in the meantime Iran is working every day and
every night to acquire nuclear weapons."
"He (ElBaradei) is an obstacle in the way to operating sanctions against Iran," the
minister added, betraying his impatience with the head of the United Nations atomic
body. Mr Sheetrit's salvo is the latest in a series of broadsides against ElBaradei.
Israel's Minister for Strategic Affairs Avigdor Lieberman and Foreign Ministry Director-
General Aharon Abramovich have aired similar views.
Dr ElBaradei is expected to submit his report later this month on whether Iran is fulfilling
an understanding arrived at in August to answer all outstanding questions about its
nuclear enrichment programme. The five permanent members of the United Nations
Security Council, and Germany (5+1), will assess his report at their next meeting, which
is likely to be held ahead of the November 22-23 IAEA Board of Governors meeting. Dr
ElBaradei has said in an October 31 interview to CNN that he has "not received any
information that there is a concrete active nuclear weapons programme going on right
now."
Mr Sheetrit asserted that the international community should impose stricter sanctions
on Iran "before it is too late." Iran, he suggested, is a greater threat to the Arab world
than Israel. "It is a threat to the Western world. [There is a] big danger if Iran acquires
nuclear weapons," he sought to emphasise.
"Why is Iran [interested in having] missiles that have a range of thousands of
kilometres? What do they need missiles for ... to target Europe? Egypt? Sudan?" he
wondered animatedly. "What is the threat to Iran?" he said, before pausing to add that it
is Iran that is "threatening everybody else."
Mr Sheetrit, who is on an official visit to India to attend the Second Asian Ministerial
Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction, on Wednesday called on Minister of External
Affairs Pranab Mukherjee. He is expected to call on Minister of Home Affairs Shivraj Patil
and Minister of Panchayati Raj Manishankar Aiyar.
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