BRUSSELS, Dec 6: US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice pressed for tougher sanctions against Iran and for an independent Kosovo as she arrived here on Thursday for Nato talks that could spark further friction with Russia.

Rice made her case on the flight to Brussels where on Friday she will meet Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on the sidelines of meetings with North Atlantic Treaty Organisation and European Union foreign ministers.

It will be Rice’s first face-to-face test with Russia since a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) published Monday suggested Iran shelved work on an atomic bomb in 2003.

Though she argued the report shows that international pressure is causing Iran to change course, Russia on Wednesday joined China in suggesting that the intelligence lessened the need for a third round of UN sanctions.

“I don’t see that the NIE changes the course that we’re on,” Rice told reporters.

The report by the US intelligence community suggested that US allegations about Iran’s atomic goals might have been exaggerated for at least two years, although it said Tehran could still make a nuclear weapon by 2015.

In negotiations with Britain, China, France, Germany and Russia, the United States has been pressing for a third round of sanctions against Iran for its refusal to stop enriching uranium, despite resistance from Moscow and Beijing.

The group is called the P5-plus-One, or the permanent five veto-wielding members of the UN Security Council, plus Germany.

The European Union has said it would keep using pressure to persuade Iran to halt enriching uranium which could be used in a bomb.

The secretary of state also reiterated US support for enforcing a UN proposal giving Kosovo “supervised independence” after the failure of last-ditch talks on the breakaway Serbian province’s future.

“The logic of the Ahtisaari plan is going to have to be carried out,” she said.

UN Kosovo envoy Martti Ahtisaari presented a plan early this year calling for independence under international supervision for the ethnic Albanian-majority province.

But 11th-hour talks to resolve Kosovo’s future, mediated by the troika of US envoy Frank Wisner and his EU and Russian counterparts, failed last week to move Belgrade and Pristina closer ahead of a Dec 10 UN deadline. Pristina demands nothing short of independence while Belgrade, backed by Russia, is only prepared to grant wide autonomy.

The troika was to present its final report to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon by Dec 10, when its mandate on Kosovo ends.

“We believe that at that point (Dec 10), we will have exhausted the options for the troika and the troika will come to an end,” Rice said. “Serbia and Kosovo need to get on with their futures.”

The problem for Nato is whether its 17,000-strong KFOR force would still have the UN’s legal authority to quell any violence, wherever it might occur, when Kosovo moves to independence.

The issue was to be thrashed out by Nato and EU foreign ministers at a so-called Transatlantic dinner later Thursday hosted by Belgium.—AFP