COPENHAGEN - Denmark, a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council, on Friday insisted that the international community maintain a dialogue with Iran over its controversial nuclear program and warned against against making any rash decision on sanctions.
"We should not act hastily," Danish Foreign Minister Per Stig Moeller told news agency Ritzau before going into a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Finland on Friday.
"We are going to discuss sanctions very thoroughly at this meeting. I assume that (EU foreign policy chief) Javier Solana will go to Tehran. And then we will have to examine the situation again," he said.
Iran defied a United Nations Security Council deadline to halt uranium enrichment, the UN watchdog International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reported in Vienna on Thursday, setting the stage for possible UN sanctions against the Islamic republic.
In July the council demanded that Iran suspend all enrichment-related activities by August 31, spurred by US-led concerns that Tehran's nuclear programme is a covert attempt to produce nuclear weapons.
Uranium enrichment makes fuel for civilian nuclear reactors, but in highly refined form can serve as the raw material for atom bombs.
09/01/2006 14:28 GMT