VIENNA, Feb 4: The International Atomic Energy Agency voted on Saturday to report Iran to the United Nations Security Council over fears it seeks atomic bombs and a defiant Tehran said it would end UN inspections right away and pursue full-scale uranium enrichment.
In a 27-3 vote, the IAEA’s 35-nation board opted to notify the Security Council on Iran, but no council action, including sanctions, would be considered before a conclusive IAEA investigative report due next month.
Three key Third World nations on the IAEA board — India, Egypt and Brazil — voted in favour of the resolution.
Cuba, Venezuela and Syria, all US adversaries, voted against the resolution, while Indonesia, Algeria, Belarus, South Africa and Libya abstained.
The vote had been delayed by a day of haggling between EU powers and 15 developing states from the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM). These tried to soften the resolution for fear it would antagonise Iran and curb their own nuclear energy options.
US and EU leaders, aware that Russia, China and developing states wanted to avoid a showdown with the world’s fourth biggest oil exporter, insisted that reporting Iran would not finish off diplomacy or trigger early sanctions.
Ultimately a rare consensus between the Western powers on the Security Council — Britain, France and the United States — and Russia and China reached earlier this week made the vote possible. Moscow and Beijing previously blocked IAEA action.
Tehran says its nuclear programme is designed solely to generate electricity for its economy, not bombs, and claims a sovereign right to make uranium fuel on its own soil.
To head off Security Council action, Iran must halt fuel enrichment ‘for which it today has no civil requirement’, preserve spot IAEA checks and give IAEA sleuths full access to nuclear officials, equipment and related military sites, said Gregory Schulte, US ambassador to the agency.
IRAN ENDS INSPECTIONS: Hours after the vote, Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad ordered an end to tough International Atomic Energy Agency inspections of his country’s nuclear programme as of Sunday.
According to an official statement, the president in a ‘letter to the head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organisation, announced the end of the application of the additional protocol as of tomorrow’.
The additional protocol to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, signed by Iran’s former pro-reform government but never ratified by the hardline parliament, gives the IAEA stronger inspection powers.
Iranian officials said the vote could also destroy any basis for talks on Russia’s proposal to defuse Iran’s standoff with the West by taking in Iranian uranium for enrichment, in theory preventing diversion to bomb-making.
“In this context, we think we have to see how we can consider the Russian proposal. Now it’s not clear for us,” said Iranian deputy nuclear negotiator Javad Vaeedi, who on Friday had said engaging the Security Council would ‘kill’ the talks.”
VIENNA, Feb 4: The International Atomic Energy Agency voted on Saturday to report Iran to the United Nations Security Council over fears it seeks atomic bombs and a defiant Tehran said it would end UN inspections right away and pursue full-scale uranium enrichment.
