EU Presses for Emergency IAEA Session on Iran

Roula Khalaf in London and Daniel Dombey in Brussels, The Financial Times:

British, French and German foreign ministers meeting in Berlin on Thursday are expected to call for an emergency session this month of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations’s nuclear watchdog, which would then discuss a referral of the dispute to the Security Council.

Angela Merkel, German chancellor, will also discuss the issue with George W. Bush, US president, in Washington on Thursday and with Vladimir Putin, Russian president, in Moscow on Monday.

Britain on Wednesday vowed to report Iran to the UN Security Council, intensifying diplomatic pressure over Tehran’s nuclear programme. A referral would require a majority vote in the 35-member IAEA board.

Responding to Iran’s decision to resume limited uranium enrichment research, Tony Blair, the UK prime minister, told parliament: “I think the first thing to do is to secure agreement for a reference to the Security Council, [if] that is indeed what the allies jointly decide, as I think seems likely.”

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European officials warned that Tehran would have to reinstate the seals at its Natanz research facility and refrain from all the activities it announced this week if it wanted to avoid a UN referral. “We made clear in December they had to retain the full suspension. Removing the seals [at the Natanz plant] was the critical step. They’ve crossed the red line,“ said one diplomat. “A half-step back will not stop us [in seeking a UN referral].” READ MORE

Germany, previously often seen as taking a “softer” policy on Iran than the other large EU countries, now maintains that there is no remaining ground for discussions with Iran, following Tehran’s actions this week.

The case for referral will be strengthened by the report for the next IAEA board meeting, in which Mohamed ElBaradei, the agency’s director-general, is set to conclude that he has made “no progress” in convincing Iran to reveal more about its nuclear programme, which Tehran maintains is peaceful.

European diplomats also appeared confident that Russia would not oppose a referral although so far Moscow has been reluctant to back such a move publicly.

The diplomats emphasise that over the weekend Russia and China joined with the three other permanent UN Security Council members and sent diplomatic “demarches” calling for Iran to desist from its nuclear research. The demarches also asked Iran to pass on a sensitive document it received from Pakistan’s AQ Khan nuclear procurement network in the 1980s that some diplomats see as evidence of Tehran’s interest in developing nuclear weapons.

Nuclear experts on Wednesday cautioned that Iran’s current plans posed no short-term risk of large-scale production of nuclear material. Iran on Tuesday said it was planning to install small-scale gas ultracentrifuge cascades at a pilot enrichment plant in Natanz and to feed UF6 gas into the cascades for research purposes.

But experts familiar with UN inspectors’ work in Iran said any enrichment was a long way off because some of the centrifuges at the pilot plant had crashed when the plant was shut down in 2004. But diplomats, say even small-scale enrichment would bring Iran closer to mastering the production of fuel that could be used for military or civilian purposes.

If it reaches the UN Security Council, the first step is likely to be a UN resolution calling on Iran to abide by the demands of the IAEA.

Additional reporting by Bertrand Benoit and Hugh Williamson in Berlin, and Mark Turner at the United Nations