Cannon urges tough Chinese stance on Iran
Islamic revolution also marked as security forces break up counter-protests
The Chinese "need to step up to the plate," Lawrence Cannon told The Canadian Press. "China, of course, is a very highly regarded partner with Iran."
China has been reluctant over the past few weeks to go along with calls from Western governments for new sanctions against Iran.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said earlier Thursday that his country has produced its first batch of a higher grade of enriched uranium, two days after the Islamic republic began the process.
Ahmadinejad told hundreds of thousands of Iranians celebrating the anniversary of the 1979 Islamic revolution that the country is now a "nuclear state," but he insisted Iran has no intention of building atomic weapons.
Cannon called on Iran to end its uranium enrichment and open up its nuclear program to United Nations inspectors.
"We're deeply disappointed with Iran's attitude," he said.
Cannon expects the issue of Iran's nuclear ambitions will be the focus of a March meeting of G8 foreign ministers in Gatineau, Que.
Speaking in Vancouver, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said he had spoken earlier with Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin about the Iranian nuclear program.
Harper said Iran's enrichment program has to cease, adding the Iranian regime poses a "grave danger."
The prime minister said the international community must take co-ordinated action.
International observers said the latest announcement from Iran is intended as much to quell dissent domestically as it is to exert the country's independence internationally.
"He wants to tell his people they are at the front of the technical achievements, 'we are achieving every month a new thing … support us,'" said Israeli intelligence expert Ephraim Kam.
While government supporters rallied in central Tehran on Thursday to mark the anniversary of the revolution, Iranian security forces moved across the capital city to break up counter-protests, opposition websites reported. More than 1,000 arrests were reported.
Opposition protests targeted
Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's granddaughter and her husband were the most high-profile opposition members arrested Thursday, according to the pro-reform Rahesabz website. Khomeini was the architect of the revolution.
Zahra Eshraghi and her husband, Mohammad Reza Khatami, the brother of a former president, were in custody for an hour, according to the report, which could not be independently confirmed.
Uranium enrichment
Natural uranium is made up almost entirely of uranium-238, which cannot be used directly as nuclear fuel. Less than one per cent of natural uranium is uranium-235, the key component in nuclear weapons.
Enriched uranium refers to uranium in which the proportion of U-235 has been artificially increased. Low-grade enriched uranium, for example, is made up of about three to four per cent U-235.
At higher-grade levels, enriched uranium can be used as fuel in reactors, and at 90 per cent enrichment, it can be used in nuclear weapons.
A UN-backed proposal to Iran called for the country's low-grade uranium to be shipped to Russia to be converted into a material usable as fuel but not for weapons. Iran balked at the deal, instead suggesting it should be able to purchase fuel-grade uranium and maintain its own domestic enrichment program.
Dozens of militia members with batons and pepper spray attacked the convoy of senior opposition leader Mahdi Karroubi, smashing his car windows and forcing him to turn back as he tried to join the protests, his son, Hossein Karroubi, told The Associated Press.
Opposition protesters numbered in the hundreds, according to reports, far fewer than the thousands that came out to protest after the presidential election last summer.
Ahmadinejad used his nationally televised address to say his country would not be bullied into curtailing the nuclear program.
"I want to announce with a loud voice here that the first package of 20 per cent fuel was produced and provided to the scientists," he said, referring to the recently begun process of enriching Iran's uranium stockpile to higher levels.
Iran had announced Monday that it would be enriching its uranium stockpile to 20 per cent levels, which prompted Western leaders to threaten sanctions against Iran if the country doesn't comply with an International Atomic Energy Agency plan that would see Iran's uranium shipped abroad for enriching.
West fears Iranian bomb
The United States and its allies have accused Iran of attempting to use its civilian nuclear program as a cover to build nuclear weapons, concerns fuelled by secrecy surrounding Iran's construction of a second underground enrichment facility and Ahmadinejad's frequent anti-Israel rhetoric.
Tehran insists it wishes only to use its nuclear program for generating electricity and producing nuclear material for use in medicine.
France and the United States have said that Iran's actions have left no choice but for them to push for a fourth set of UN Security Council sanctions against Iran.
With files from The Associated Press