EU draft ready for world bodies: Iran reacts angrily
VIENNA, Sept 20: The EU turned up the pressure on Iran on Tuesday with a draft resolution reporting Tehran’s nuclear programme to the UN Security Council, but Russia and China said the UN nuclear watchdog can handle the issue.
Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator reacted angrily, warning that Tehran might pull out of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and resume uranium enrichment.
“If you use the language of force Iran will have no choice but to ... leave the framework of the NPT ... and to resume enrichment,” Ali Larijani, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, told a news conference.
Although Iran resumed uranium processing at Isfahan last month, prompting the EU action, Tehran has yet to restart enrichment, the most sensitive part of the nuclear fuel cycle.
Mr Larijani also said the world’s fourth biggest oil producer may link countries’ access to its oil to whether they support Iran. Tehran says its nuclear programme is for generating electricity and denies seeking nuclear bombs.
The EU draft, obtained by Reuters, asks the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) “to report to all members of the Agency and to the Security Council and General Assembly of the United Nations ... Iran’s many failures and breaches of its obligations to comply with its NPT Safeguards Agreement”.
Iran signed the NPT, the benchmark arms control treaty, in 1968. The IAEA is required to report breaches of the NPT to the Security Council, which can impose economic sanctions.
The United States and European Union suspect Iran’s nuclear fuel programme, which it hid from the IAEA for 18 years, is a front for developing weapons.
Diplomats on the IAEA board, holding its quarterly meeting this week, said the EU draft had been informally distributed to the 35 IAEA board members and could be officially submitted to the board as early as Wednesday.
But the Russian and Chinese foreign ministers, at a meeting in New York attended by the Indian foreign minister, agreed that Iran’s nuclear programme can be dealt with within the framework of the IAEA, the Russian Foreign Ministry said on Tuesday.
“The ministers agreed that the situation surrounding Iran’s nuclear programme is not irreversible, and there remains every possibility the problem can be resolved within the IAEA framework,” the foreign ministry said in a statement.
Opposition by other countries like Brazil and South Africa also makes it more unclear whether the IAEA board would vote on a resolution this week.
“They (the EU) might just table the resolution but the board would take no action,” another diplomat said, adding that the EU had 20 or 21 firm ‘yes’ votes out of the 35 board members, far short of the overwhelming majority the Europeans would like.
CONCERN: Diplomats said the Russians and Chinese were concerned that the standoff over Iran’s nuclear programme would escalate out of control if it went to the Security Council.
But a Western diplomat told reporters that the 15-member Council, on which also France, Britain and the United States are also permanent members, could handle it.
“We believe the Security Council will effectively manage the situation,” the diplomat said on condition of anonymity.
He said Washington and its European allies would use the Council’s authority to increase the pressure on Tehran to comply with the NPT and begin fully cooperating with the IAEA.
US Undersecretary of State R. Nicholas Burns said that in talks with foreign officials, he found a “strong desire to signal to Iran this week that its actions have not been accepted by the great majority of the international community.”
He said Iran had become increasingly isolated after Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad insisted in a speech to the UN this weekend on Iran’s right to a nuclear programme and denounced western attempts to curb it as “nuclear apartheid”.
“It was seen to be a very harsh and uncompromising speech,” Burns told Reuters on the fringes of the UN General Assembly.
The EU draft will probably undergo revisions based on comments from Russia and China, as well as South Africa and the other 13 board members from the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), most of which oppose the idea of a Security Council report.
The draft resolution does not mention sanctions.
It does, however, recommend that the Security Council urge Iran to allow the IAEA to inspect any sites it wants to visit, whether or not Iran is legally bound to do so. It also wants the Council to tell Iran to resume both talks with the EU and a freeze of sensitive nuclear work that Tehran ended last month.
Responding to Iran’s repeated suggestion that a Security Council report was a prelude to military action, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said that was nonsense.
Mr Larijani warned countries with close economic ties with Iran that it would note any failure to support it.
“Some countries have extensive economic relations with Iran, especially in the oil sector but feel no responsibility to defend the rights of an oppressed nation. The Supreme National Security Council is determined to balance these two issues.”—Reuters
