Titolo: 20:51 DJ UPDATE: Iran ''Not Concerned'' About Imminent EU Oil Ban
Testo: (Adds U.K. on nuclear arms)
TEHRAN (AFP)--Iran said on Thursday it was "not concerned" about an imminent EU ban on its oil, saying it would endure the extra sanctions even though they amounted to "an economic war."
"Iran has always been ready to counter such hostile actions and we are not concerned at all about the sanctions," Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi said in a news conference with visiting Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu.
"We have taken provisionalmeasures. We have weathered the storm for the past 32 years and we will be able to survive this as well," Salehi said.
"These sanctions are an economic war against us," Economy Minister Shamseddin Hosseini said, according to the official IRNA news agency.
The West is squeezing Iran over its nuclear program, which the U.S. and allied nations fear is being used to develop an atomic bomb.
Iran insists the program is exclusively for peaceful, civilian use and has warned it could resort to drastic measures if it is directly threatened.
In Washington, U.K. Defense Secretary Phillip Hammond said his "working assumption is that they are flat out" in their efforts to develop nuclear weapons.
"I think they are going as fast as they can," he told a think tank, while arguing against a pre-emptive strike and for sanctions.
"We would not favor a pre-emptive strike. We have been very clear that we need to maintain the pressure but we also need to engage. And any question of a pre-emptive strike is abandoning the engagement."
Hammond said both the U.K. and the U.S. would make sure their response to any provocation was "very measured, that there isn''t an accidental escalation.
"What we cannot answer for is whether there is a plan on the other side to escalate."
The assumption is that "Iran is set on a course that it will only be deterred from if the price for achieving the goal that they set out becomes too high.
"That is what we are in the process of doing by stepping up the pressure on oil revenues, on the operation of the central bank, on the economy generally," he said.
Diplomats in Brussels said on Wednesday that the European Union had reached an "agreement in principle" to ban Iranian oil imports and was discussing the timing of the action.
The ban would add to other sanctions already imposed by the West, including a U.S. measure enacted last weekend that targets Iran''s central bank, which processes most of the Islamic republic''s oil sales.
The EU is the second-biggest destination for Iranian oil after China, accounting for around 15%, or some 450,000 barrels, of the 2.6 million barrels exported each day.
Iran relies on oil sales for 80% of its foreign revenues.