Jerusalem (ANTARA News/AFP) - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday renewed his call for the international community to impose an oil embargo on Iran over its nuclear drive, regardless of the UN Security Council.

"We must prohibit Iranian oil exports and imports to Iran of refined oil products. No other sanctions will be effective," Netanyahu said at a Jewish gathering in Jerusalem.

"It is uncertain that these measures will suffice, but at least we will have tried. If the UN Security Council does not agree, they could be imposed separately, outside the UN. What is certain is that these sanctions must be applied, and now," he added.

"We have arrived at a point where the international community has to decide if it seriously plans to stop Iran`s nuclear programme," Netanyahu said at a meeting of delegates from the Jewish Agency, an organisation that encourages Jewish immigration to Israel.

On a visit to Russia last week, Netanyahu insisted on the need for "biting sanctions that have the power to influence the regime, bitter sanctions that have to hit, in a convincing way, the oil industry, imports, exports and refining."

Western countries suspect Iran`s nuclear programme is intended to produce an atomic bomb, despite repeated denials by Tehran, which said on Monday that it plans to start building two new uranium enrichment plants from March.

Israel, considered to be the Middle East`s sole, if undeclared, nuclear power, views Iran as its top enemy after statements by its President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that the Jewish state was doomed to be "wiped off the map."(*)

Editor: B Kunto Wibisono

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