Russia claims "no economic necessity" for Iran to continue uranium enrichment

RIA Novosti (Russia) has this story today:

Russia's foreign minister said on Wednesday that Moscow saw no economic necessity for Iran to continue its controversial program to enrich uranium.

Iran's nuclear program has been at the center of an international dispute, with Western countries suspecting Tehran of covering up a weapons program and Iran saying it needs nuclear fuel for energy.

"We are attempting to persuade the Iranians that the freezing of this program would be beneficial for Iran in as much as it would lead to immediate negotiations with the six [international negotiators], including the United States," Sergei Lavrov said.

Russia, which is helping the Iranians build the country's first nuclear power plant in Bushehr, southern Iran, announced the start of nuclear fuel deliveries to the plant on December 17.

If Iran were to agree to freeze its uranium enrichment program, then, said Lavrov, subsequent negotiations with the Iran Six - Russia, the U.S. China, Britain, France and Germany - would help lift, "once and for all, the suspicions that the Iranian nuclear program possesses any other kind of component than a peaceful one."....

EU & UN Reps Expelled from Afghanistan; UK's MI6 Negotiated with Taliban

Deutsche Welle reports today:

A government official said that acting European Union mission head Michael Semple and senior UN official Mervyn Patterson had held an illegal meeting with members of the Taliban and must leave by Thursday, Dec. 27.

"It is the government's last decision. They are persona non grata," Reuters quoted an anonymous Afghan official as saying.

The press officer for the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, Nilab Mobarez, said the organization hoped to quickly clear up the situation so Patterson, who would leave the country on Thursday, could soon return....

...Semple, an Irishman, and Patterson, a Briton, were charged with having talks with the Taliban in the southern province of Helmand without the knowledge of the government in Kabul, which accused them of endangering the security and sovereignty of Afghanistan.

NATO and Afghan troops this month drove the Taliban out of the province, which is the heart of Afghan's drug-producing poppy production. The radical Islamists had controlled the region for the previous 10 months.

Thomas Harding and Tom Coghlan at The Telegraph have this revelation:

...The diplomatic row blew up after the Telegraph revealed that agents from MI6 entered secret talks with Taliban leaders despite Gordon Brown's pledge that Britain would not negotiate with terrorists.

Officers from the Secret Intelligence Service staged discussions, known as "jirgas", with senior insurgents on several occasions over the summer.

An intelligence source said: "The SIS officers were understood to have sought peace directly with the Taliban with them coming across as some sort of armed militia. The British would also provide 'mentoring' for the Taliban."

The disclosure comes only a fortnight after the Prime Minister told the House of Commons: "We will not enter into any negotiations with these people." Opposition leaders said that Mr Brown had "some explaining to do".

The Government was apparently prepared to admit that the talks had taken place but Mr Brown was thought to have "bottled out" just before Prime Minister's Questions on Dec 12, when he made his denial instead.

It is thought that the Americans were extremely unhappy with the news becoming public that an ally was negotiating with terrorists who supported the September 11 attackers.

MI6's meetings with the Taliban took place up to half a dozen times at houses on the outskirts of Lashkah Gah and in villages in the Upper Gereshk valley, to the north-east of Helmand's main town.

The compounds were surrounded by a force of British infantry providing a security cordon.

To maintain the stance that President Hamid Karzai's government was leading the negotiations the clandestine meetings took place in the presence of Afghan officials.

"These meetings were with up to a dozen Taliban or with Taliban who had only recently laid down their arms," an intelligence source said. "The impression was that these were important motivating figures inside the Taliban."

The Prime Minister had denied reports of talks with the Taliban under questioning from David Cameron, the Tory leader, in Parliament....