EJC leaders hold talks with Slovenian EU presidency
09 Apr 2008
Slovenian Prime Minister Jansa
The president of the European Jewish Congress (EJC), Moshe Kantor, has warned that Iran already has the capacity to build nuclear weapons. He called on European Union members to suspend economic cooperation with Tehran. Kantor headed a delegation of EJC leaders during talks in Ljubljana with the EU Slovenian presidency.
"Iran already has the capacity to build nuclear weapons," Kantor said at a press conference after meeting with Slovenian prime minister Janez Jansa and foreign minister Dimitrij Rupel. Slovenia holds the six-monthly rotating presidency of the EU until the end of June. Kantor noted that Iran’s president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had announced the same day that Iran had started work to install 6,000 new centrifuges to enrich uranium at its main nuclear plant. This will triple the number of centrifuges, representing a major expansion of Iran's nuclear capacities.
Kantor’s two-day talks in Slovenia are aimed at encouraging European responses to the Iranian nuclear threat, combat xenophobia and anti-Semitism and promoting the EU’s strategic, political and diplomatic relations with Israel. European countries should step up pressure on Iran, which would put pressure on Iranian authorities from within the country, the EJC president said. He called on EU members to take a more united stance on the Iranian issue.
In a statement, the Slovenian prime minister’s office said that Jansa had told Kantor that the Slovenian government has declared 27 January as Holocaust Remembrance Day. According to the Slovenian news agency STA, Rupel told Kantor that there was political will to solve the issue of restitution of Jewish property in Slovenia and reassured him that there was an on-going dialogue with the Slovenian Jewish community as well as with the World Jewish Restitution Organization.