UNITED NATIONS, Dec 21: Despite Russian objections on a proposed resolution for imposing sanctions on Iran for its refusal to end its uranium enrichment programme, France, Britain and Germany have agreed on a watered down text and will seek a vote in the United Nations Security Council on Friday, diplomats here said.
“The new text has a number of changes which go quite a long way to meet Russian concerns,” German Ambassador Thomas Matussek told reporters after a closed meeting with his counterparts from the United States, Russia, China, Britain and France.
According to some UN diplomats, the European states offered the compromises in an effort to get Russian support for their bid for voting on the resolution by the end of the current week.
The latest text urges nations to notify the sanction committee of the Security Council of the travel of Iranian officials on a list.
“All states shall notify the committee of the entry into or transit through their territories of the persons designated in the annex to this resolution,” it said.
Instead of preventing persons concerned with Iran’s nuclear programme from travelling abroad, the text just called upon states to exercise vigilance regarding the travel.Britain, France and Germany circulated two weeks ago a revised draft resolution which imposed sanctions on Iran for its refusal to suspend its uranium enrichment activities.
It urged Iran to suspend all enrichment activities as well as all heavy water related projects and bared the country from importing or exporting key materials and technology related to its nuclear and ballistic missile programmes, but leaves a slot for dual-use items.
However, some articles of the text were objected to by Russia, which insisted that the travel ban as well as the financial sanctions were unnecessary.
On Tuesday, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan urged the key parties to seek a negotiated settlement with Iran over its nuclear programme and warned that military intervention would be ‘unwise and disastrous’.
A senior US defence official said the idea of building up US navy forces had been discussed for some time and one proposal was to send a second aircraft carrier to the region.
