UNITED NATIONS, March 10: The UN Security Council is considering a statement listing multiple failures by Iran to meet the demands of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) over its nuclear programme and urging it to comply, but making only passing mention of punishment for continued resistance, the New York Times reported on Friday.
A proposed draft obtained exclusively by the newspaper says the council members have indicated they hope to issue next week a nonbinding presidential statement. The body continues to hope for a negotiated solution “that guarantees Iran’s nuclear programme is for exclusively peaceful purposes.”
In the only reference to what would occur in the absence of any agreement, the draft says that “continued enrichment-related activity would add to the importance and urgency of further action by the council,” the Times said.
The council received the dossier on Iran on Wednesday from the atomic energy agency, which is the nuclear monitor for the United Nations. The five veto-bearing nations, Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States, held a meeting that night and have scheduled another session for Friday.
The draft, composed by Britain and France and incorporating American policy goals, says the council’s purpose is to reinforce the authority of the atomic energy agency and its resolutions, which call on the Iranians to suspend all enrichment-related reprocessing activities.
The text calls for a report back to the council on whether Iran is cooperating from the director general of the nuclear agency, Mohammed ElBaradei “within a short time frame” after the statement is adopted. Diplomats have not settled on what that time frame would be, but two participants in the meeting discouraged reports that it meant as little as two weeks.
The statement focuses on Iran’s failures to live up to agreements with the nuclear agency and expresses “serious concern” about the role of Iran’s military in the nuclear programme and about evidence that the real purpose of the programme is to build bombs.
