BRUSSELS, Nov 3: Russia will not back a draft UN sanctions resolution against Iran without significant changes, a senior Russian official said as world powers prepared to meet on Friday to tackle differences over the move.
Negotiations on the draft resolution, drawn up by Britain, France and Germany with general US support, promise to be arduous, possibly lasting weeks, because veto-wielding Russia and China oppose tough sanctions.
“We will not support the present version,” Russia’s Interfax news agency quoted Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Kislyak as saying, adding that the proposal “requires major fine-tuning”.
Kislyak spoke just before European Union foreign ministers met their Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov in Brussels to clarify Moscow’s stance before envoys of the six powers met at the United Nations later in the day. Lavrov declined comment.
On Wednesday, he said Russia rejected steps that would corner Iran, alluding to a travel ban in the draft on Iran’s nuclear ambitions, which the West believes are a cover for bomb-making but Tehran says involve generating electricity only.
“We cannot support measures which, in essence, aim at isolating Iran from the outside world, including the isolation of people who are charged with leading negotiations on the nuclear programme,” Lavrov said.
“I would think we will get a resolution imposing some minor sanctions,” said a Western diplomat at the United Nations, who asked not to be identified. “But that would require substantive concessions from both the Americans, who want tougher sanctions, and the Russians, who (really) want no sanctions at all.”
The draft orders all countries to prevent the sale and supply of equipment, technology and financing contributing to Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs. It would freeze assets of people and entities involved in these programmes and prevent them from travelling except for special events.
Friday’s meeting of the six powers will be the first in more than a week. All but Germany, a key negotiator, are permanent Security Council members with veto rights.
Russia’s demands are expected to include softening the sanctions and redefining an exemption for a nuclear reactor Moscow is building for Iran, said council members speaking on condition of anonymity.
The European-authored draft exempts from sanctions the $800 million Bushehr reactor in southwestern Iran, expected to go into operation late next year.
But the draft says Russia must check with a Security Council committee if it delivers material that can be used for weapons, such as parts used for the uranium enrichment cycle.
Russia has objected to including Bushehr in the resolution in the first place, saying it was a power plant that is legal under the 1970 nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Lavrov said the resolution should focus only on areas the International Atomic Energy Agency has defined as serious, such as uranium enrichment, chemical processing and heavy-water reactors.
Iran’s nuclear research programme has already purified nominal amounts of uranium to the low level needed to fuel power plants. Refined to a high level, uranium can set off the chain reaction at the heart of atomic bombs.
In June, the six powers offered Iran trade and technology incentives to shelve its enrichment project but only on the condition – rejected by Tehran – that it take that step first.
EU powers drew up the sanctions draft after Tehran ignored a Council resolution demanding it stop enrichment by Aug 31.
Iran has the world’s second largest oil reserves but says it needs alternative energy sources for the future when its fossil fuels may run out. The West says Iran’s history of concealing nuclear work from UN inspectors raises suspicions.
“The world should know that any decision it takes or whatever they do, our nation will not abandon this right (to peaceful nuclear energy),” powerful cleric Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati told Friday prayer worshippers in Tehran.
“We want to become independent in energy in the future and they don’t want to let us be so,” he said.—Reuters
