WARNING: This is Version 1 of my old archive, so Photos will NOT work and many links will NOT work. But you can find articles by searching on the Titles. There is a lot of information in this archive. Use the SEARCH BAR at the top right. Prior to December 2012; I was a pro-Christian type of Conservative. I was unaware of the mass of Jewish lies in history, especially the lies regarding WW2 and Hitler. So in here you will find pro-Jewish and pro-Israel material. I was definitely WRONG about the Boeremag and Janusz Walus. They were for real.
Original Post Date: 2007-02-22 Time: 00:00:00 Posted By: Jan
By ANDREW E. KRAMER
Published: February 20, 2007
MOSCOW, Feb. 19 (151) Russia said Monday that it would slow work on Iran's nearly completed Bushehr nuclear power plant.
Russia contended that Iran had not made the last two $25 million monthly payments, in a dispute about whether it could pay in euros instead of dollars.
The move added a new twist to the deeply contentious project to build a Russian-designed light-water reactor in Iran, a decade-old deal that is a factor in the United States' concerns over Iran's nuclear ambitions.
The dispute, which became public on Monday, will delay, perhaps by a year, any delivery of nuclear fuel to Iran, Russian officials and experts said. Low-enriched uranium fuel was scheduled to be shipped next month.
“The accounts are not being paid,” said Ivan A. Dybov, spokesman for Rosatom, the Russian nuclear agency. What is at issue, he said, is a request made last month by an Iranian bank to settle accounts in euros rather than dollars. The Iranian government has a stated policy of settling contracts and holding reserves in currencies other than the dollar.
As part of its effort to halt Iran's nuclear program, the United States has encouraged European banks to freeze Iranian dollar-denominated accounts.
An Iranian official denied that the country had been late in making payments. “We have made all the payments so far based on the contract and the agreed installments,” said Muhammad Saeedi, the deputy director of the Atomic Energy Organization, the official IRNA news agency reported.
“We will try to come up with a solution for the financial problem of the Russian contractor, which is their problem, not the problem of the Iranian side, in the next few days,” he added.
A former Iranian president, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, said, “World powers are trying to dominate international organizations and deny Iran's right, but we expect our friends to stop such moves,” IRNA reported.
A United Nations ultimatum to Iran to halt uranium enrichment expires on Wednesday. But the commercial arm-twisting was also in keeping with the Kremlin's policy lately of pumping up the bottom line across a spectrum of state businesses, from oil and gas to nuclear power.
Analysts say rising prices for steel and heavy machinery have probably made the Bushehr project unprofitable.
Russia refused payment in euros without opening the contract to renegotiation, Mr. Dybov said. The Iranians settled less than 25 percent of the bill in January and missed February's payment entirely, he said. “We aren't turning down the euros” on principle, Mr. Dybov said, but he added that any change must be incorporated in a contract amendment. The payment conditions and the exact amount of the shortfall are commercial secrets, he said.
Russian officials also cited as a cause of the delay a holdup in the delivery of safety equipment for the reactor from an unspecified third country. The plant was scheduled to begin operations in September.
Now, they probably will not begin before mid-2008, said Andrei Cherkasenko, a board member of the Russian state nuclear power company Atompromresursy, the Russian press agency Interfax reported.
The conflict was not the first dispute between the countries over the plant. “From time to time, the Russians get fed up with the Iranians” and work slows, Rose Gottemoeller, the director of the Carnegie Moscow Center, said in a telephone interview. “The Russians have been very canny in using the Bushehr project to back up their diplomacy” by modulating the construction schedule, she said.
Nazila Fathi contributed reporting from Tehran
From Russia:
Putin s “friends” in Iran are not hurry up to pay him.
I am sure that these deals with crazy mullas are dangerous for Russia itself.
In order to get 1-2 extra billions of US dollars we supports an aggressive medieval regime whose rockets in fact can reach Moscow much easy than Western Europe
Source: World All NYT
URL:http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/20/world/europ…/p>