American planes for Iranian peace?

Claims the US offered 20 Boeing aircraft to soothe Tehran amid an impasse on its nuclear programme has inflamed the republic's hardliners.

Iranian media say the United States offered 20 Boeing aircraft in an attempt to soothe Tehran amid an impasse on its nuclear programme. And though it might never have happened, it quickly inflamed the republic's hardliners. TEHRAN // An unconfirmed Iranian report claims the US has offered to sell 20 new Boeing aircraft and aeroplane parts worth $2.5 billion (Dh9bn) to Iran as a show of good will in order to put an end to the long-running disputes over Iranian assets frozen in the US and encourage direct talks with the US.

"The messages from the US president to Iran about delivering the planes were sent after the finalisation of the results of the presidential elections," Fars News Agency on Saturday quoted an "informed source" as saying. The source also told Fars News Agency that some of the aircraft and spare parts were being delivered to Iran through Venezuela. The Venezuelan president, Hugo Chávez, visited Tehran for a second time after Iran's June presidential elections last week during which he met with Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and the president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

The planes and spare parts are to be paid for from the Iranian assets in the US that were frozen nearly 30 years ago following the seizure of the US embassy in Tehran by radical students, the source claimed. Mohammad Ali Ilkhani, the head of the Civil Aviation Organisation, however, was quoted by Mehr News Agency on Saturday as denying that there had been any proposal to sell aircraft to Iran. Yesterday, the organisation's spokesman, Reza Jafarzadeh, was quoted by Fars News Agency as saying that his organisation had yet not received any "orders or reports about the details of [the US] pledge to deliver the aircraft" and declined to make any further comments regarding the subject.

Whether or not the US puts an end to its embargo on Iran's aviation industry by delivering new aircraft to replace its dilapidated fleet, does not seem to convince Iran's hardliners of American good will towards Iran. "The US statesmen and President Obama himself should not doubt even for a minute that the Iranian nation and officials are not prepared as much as a grain to make any concessions regarding their four preconditions [for starting direct talks]," the hardline Jomhuri Eslami newspaper wrote in an editorial yesterday, while saying the number of planes involved was 16.

The editorial said the conditions required for rapprochement with the US included an apology for interfering in Iranian affairs during the 25 years before the Islamic Revolution and for supporting the Shah, a pledge not to interfere in Iran's affairs, the release of the frozen Iranian assets in the US and a pledge not to interfere with Iran's nuclear activities or its relationship with the International Atomic Energy Agency.

"Mr Obama has resorted to such a scheme probably because of Iran's need to [have new] passenger planes and thinks that with this candy stick he can sweeten the mouths of Iranian officials and gobble up $12 billion of the assets of the Iranian nation," the paper wrote. Iran continues to demand that the nuclear issue be excluded from talks with the United States and other western powers. "The Iranians have a responsibility to the international community to walk away from their illicit nuclear weapons programme and that will be the focus from the US side in talks," the White House press secretary, Robert Gibbs, said on Saturday while welcoming Iran's agreement to sit down to direct talks with the six world powers.

"This may not have been a topic they wanted to be brought up, but I can assure you it's a topic that we'll bring up," Mr Gibbs added. "That's our goal." The remarks were made only a few hours after Iran's foreign minister, Manouchehr Mottaki, said there was a possibility of talks with western powers based on the contents of Iran's package of proposals, "should conditions be ripe", and his avowal that no compromise was to be made regarding the country's uranium enrichment programme.

President Ahmadinejad reiterated yesterday that Iran does not intend to talk to the West about anything other than what was listed in Iran's five-page proposal for talks last week. "Iran will not negotiate about its inalienable right, but we are prepared to talk about international co-operation for solving global economic and security issues and believe these problems cannot be resolved without participation of everyone," he said during a ceremony held to receive the credentials of Simon Gass, the new British ambassador to Tehran.

Yesterday, the Turkish foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, said Ankara was ready to host talks between Iran and world powers on Tehran's latest proposal. According to a press release from Iran's National Security Council quoted by IRNA, Mr Davutoglu made the offer during his meeting with Saeed Jalili, Iran's top nuclear negotiator. The minister, who was wrapping up a two-day visit, hoped the negotiations would start "as soon as possible and said Turkey is ready to host the talks", the statement issued after he met Mr Jalili said.

The Iranian package presented to the six world powers - the UN, US, Britain, China, France and Germany - proposes talks on global nuclear disarmament among other things, but makes no reference to any discussion about the country's uranium enrichment programme. [e-mail]

With additional reporting by Agence France-Presse