EU powers start work on Iran nuclear resolution

Sue Pleming and Paul Taylor, Reuters:

The European Union's three main powers began drafting a resolution on Sunday urging the U.N. nuclear watchdog to report Iran to the Security Council but faced Russian opposition and widespread misgivings among developing countries.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told the U.N. General Assembly on Saturday that Tehran was determined to press ahead with making nuclear fuel and branded Western efforts to restrict his country's program "nuclear apartheid".

The West fears Iran is secretly working to develop nuclear weapons.

Disappointed at Ahmadinejad's hardline stance, French, British and German officials decided to ask the International Atomic Energy Agency to refer Tehran to the U.N. Security Council for possible sanctions, diplomats said.

"The drafting of a resolution sending Iran to the Security Council has begun," a diplomat from one of the three EU countries, known as the EU3, told Reuters.

The 35-member governing board of the IAEA begins a crucial week-long meeting on Monday.

Political directors of the EU3 and the United States met in New York to coordinate tactics amid intensive lobbying in the corridors of the United Nations. Western officials said they were in a dilemma over whether and when to press for a vote.

"We are holding intensive consultations with all board members so we can make a practical judgement of whether or not to go for a referral," one EU diplomat said.

"Do we think we have a majority? Yes, we probably have. Do we think that a majority of, say, 20 out of 35 with some big countries voting against or abstaining would be enough to pressure Iran? That is the question," he said.

IAEA BOARD DIVIDED

A senior Bush administration official said that while Washington was working very hard to broaden the consensus for a referral, "We have been willing to consider a simple majority as opposed to a consensus." READ MORE

Diplomats said the Iran issue had divided the IAEA board roughly into two camps -- developed Western countries including the European Union, the United States, Japan and Australia versus politically powerful emerging-market states such as India, China, Brazil, South Africa and Russia.

International pressure on Iran has increased since it broke U.N. seals and resumed work at a uranium conversion plant at Isfahan last month. Work there had been suspended under a November deal with the three EU countries.

The West says Iran forfeited the right to fuel cycle technology that can be used for bombs by concealing its uranium enrichment program from the IAEA for 18 years.

But many developing states share Iran's belief that the West wants to prevent poor nations from having independent atomic programs.

Joseph Cirincione, a nuclear expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said Ahmadinejad had played effectively to that audience with his U.N. speech.

"It has levelled the playing field. There is not a clear right side in this crisis for many nations, and that's why we see so many people hesitating before referring Iran to the Security Council," he told Reuters.

Iran, which has yet to resume enrichment work at its mothballed underground plant at Natanz, hinted that it might do so soon if the IAEA board reported it to the Security Council.

"We haven't started enrichment yet but everything depends on the result of tomorrow's meeting," Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi told a weekly news conference.

IRAN SEEKING ENRICHMENT PARTNERS

Ahmadinejad not only rejected Western calls to suspend all sensitive nuclear work but invited other countries and firms to be joint-venture partners in its uranium enrichment program.

"This was a disappointing and unhelpful speech by President Ahmadinejad," British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw told BBC television.

French Defence Minister Michele Alliot-Marie told Europe 1 radio: "What is happening in Iran is extremely worrying. Not that we need to deny Iran the right to have nuclear means for civil applications ... but from there to say that a new country can have nuclear weapons is something very worrying."

But on arrival back at Tehran airport, Ahmadinejad said his New York trip had been a success.

"We think we have opened the way for a good outcome with the IAEA, so now anyone who wants to make trouble will just be using excuses as a pretext for doing so," he told reporters.

Chief nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani said the threat of Security Council referral would only worsen the situation.

"We think that negotiations do not mean anything if they are conducted under pressure," he said. "We cannot negotiate and be threatened at the same time."

IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei, fearing a permanent split of his agency's board, has urged the EU3 and the United States to give Iran another chance to comply with demands that it refrain from all sensitive nuclear activities.

Of the 14 IAEA board members belonging to the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), only two -- Singapore and Peru -- have said they would back a U.N. referral.

EU diplomats said NAM countries were considering the option of abstaining as a bloc. This would enable countries like India, Pakistan and South Africa to avoid angering Washington and the EU by voting against them.

"The only die-hard pro-Iranian countries at this point are Russia and Venezuela," an EU diplomat said.

(Additional reporting by Louis Charbonneau in Vienna, Parisa Hafezi and Alireza Ronaghi in Tehran, and Madeline Chambers in London)