Pressure builds on Iran over atom plans

Louis Charbonneau, Reuters:

EUROPE and the United States yesterday called for the United Nations' atomic watchdog to bring Iran before the Security Council over suspicions it wants to build nuclear bombs.

Diplomats said Britain, France and Germany hoped to submit a draft resolution this week to the 35-nation board of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to report Iran to the Security Council after it resumed nuclear work last month.

Several of the other 25 EU countries had expressed reservations about sending Tehran to the council, but at a meeting of the bloc's representatives in Vienna yesterday, they reached a consensus backing the EU trio's plan.

"There is no point in delaying it [a Security Council report]," an EU diplomat said, summing up the conclusion of the meeting. READ MORE

"The real problem is Russia. It will be difficult to convince the Russians." READ MORE

At a breakfast meeting with EU foreign ministers in New York, Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, urged them to consider delaying their plan to involve the UN's highest body.

Russia is not alone. Most of the non-aligned developing countries on the IAEA board are sympathetic to Iran's insistence it has a right to a peaceful nuclear programme to generate electricity. Iran denies it is seeking atomic bombs.

Mohamed ElBaradei, the IAEA chief, also called on Iran and the EU trio to avoid confrontation and return to the negotiating table."I think we regrettably ... are going though a period of confrontations and political brinkmanship," he said, indirectly chiding both Tehran's nuclear intransigence and the Western push for Security Council referral.

The US, which has long accused Tehran of seeking to develop nuclear bombs, is pushing for fast action after Britain, France and Germany failed to convince Iran to mothball its nuclear fuel programme in return for political and economic incentives.

"We think a report to the Security Council is long overdue," Gregory Schulte, the US ambassador to the IAEA said.

"The board had wanted Iran to pursue a course of co-operation and negotiation. Instead Iran appears to be pursuing a course of rhetoric and confrontation while continuing the [atomic] fuel cycle activities that give us such concern."

EU diplomats say the EU trio would not seek immediate sanctions against Iran, but ask the Security Council to call on Tehran to freeze its entire uranium enrichment programme.

Iran, however, yesterday vowed to press ahead with the nuclear fuel programme after Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, its president , branded Western efforts to restrict it as "nuclear apartheid" in a speech to the UN General Assembly on Saturday .

Ali Larijani, the secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, said: "We will continue our nuclear activities in the framework of the IAEA regulations."