Senior officials from the major world powers will hold fresh telephone consultations Tuesday on Iran's controversial nuclear program, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Monday. Rice said Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns would represent Washington in the consultations with the political directors of the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council and Germany. “Nick Burns … will hold a teleconference with his colleagues tomorrow,” Rice told a women's foreign-policy group in Washington. “They are working on finalizing a Security Council resolution-the text of one-that could then be sent to the Security Council to be voted sometime in the next several weeks.” In a reversal, U.S. intelligence agencies last week declared with “high confidence” that Iran stopped a secret nuclear-weapons program in 2003 in response to international pressure. The report overturned long-held Bush administration assumptions that Iran is determined to obtain nuclear arms regardless of international demands or sanctions.
