ARAB-EUROPEAN RELATIONS - Feb 27 - Blair Calls For 'Tough Action' Against Iran.

PM Tony Blair says Tehran is making a "big miscalculation" by refusing to suspend its nuclear enrichment program, and he urges the international community to take "tough, clear and unified" action by toughening sanctions against Iran. But the Iranian FM said in Tehran that his country would never again suspend enrichment, which the US has made a precondition for negotiations. "Suspending uranium enrichment is an illegal and illegitimate demand", Manouchehr Mottaki said, according to the official IRNA news agency. "And it will never happen". Blair said at his monthly news conference that he believed the comments - and similar remarks Sunday by Pres Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad of Iran - were "very worrying", adding, "Yet again they're indicating they want to defy the international community". The British leader refused to speculate on possible military options against Tehran, but said "people want a political and diplomatic solution to this". "The tougher and clearer and more unified we are, the better results we will get and the less the whole issue of military action arises", Blair said. Ahmadi-Nejad said on state radio that he had no intention of halting Iran's nuclear program, likening it to an unstoppable train without brakes. Political directors of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council and Germany met in London to discuss hardening sanctions against Tehran. Officials in London and Washington said new measures could include incremental restrictions on trade and weapons. The British ambassador to the UN, Emyr Jones Parry, said Feb 27 that the meeting of the six parties had been "very good". "What I expect this week is that there will be further discussions which will concretize - if I can use that verb - what we can do now to incrementally increase the measures against Iran", Jones Parry said at UN HQs in New York. He said the six parties made clear that they want to get back into negotiations with Iran "but that requires compliance by Iran". "This is a reversible process provided Iran stops the enrichment and the research and development", he said. "Then we can move forward to negotiations, and that, of course, is what we want". Blair asserted that limited sanctions imposed on Iran since December had begun to turn domestic opinion against Ahmadi-Nejad. Western officials have cited what they say is growing skepticism of Ahmadi-Nejad's legislative record from Iran's supreme leader, Ayat Ali Khamenei, as proof that his influence is faltering. "A tough message has yielded results", Blair said. The tougher the West is in insisting that Iran comply "the better the result will be". But at a conference in New York, the former chief UN weapons inspector, Hans Blix, criticised the insistence that Tehran suspend enrichment as a precondition for talks - saying it was halting progress. He said the US, Europe and the Security Council were humiliating Iran. "People have their own pride whether you like them or don't", Blix said. "We haven't heard anything about offers on guarantees for security in case they will go along with a renunciation of enrichment. It's the US that can deliver assurances about security. It's the US that can deliver recognition or normalization of relations". The US and its European allies contend Iran is using a civilian nuclear power program as a cover to produce nuclear weapons - a charge Tehran has rejected. Blair said Britain and its allies were "perfectly happy to hold talks with" Iran but claimed there was little point in a dialogue while it refused to meet international obligations to stop its nuclear drive. "The question is, What is the conversation about?" he said in his Downing Street office. "Given that they are saying they are not going to suspend enrichment, they are still supporting extremism in Iraq, in Lebanon, in Palestine and they are not showing any signs they are prepared to stop doing that".