IAEA votes to report Iran to UN Security Council

By Mark Heinrich and Francois Murphy

VIENNA (Reuters) – The U.N. nuclear watchdog voted on
Saturday to report Iran to the Security Council over fears it
is trying to build atomic bombs and a defiant Tehran said it
would end snap U.N. inspections of its nuclear plants from
Sunday.

In a 27-3 vote, the International Atomic Energy Agency’s
35-nation board opted to notify the Security Council on Iran
but no action by the Council, including sanctions, would be
taken before a conclusive IAEA investigative report due next
month.

Iran says its nuclear program is designed solely to
generate electricity, not bombs, and claims a sovereign right
to make uranium fuel on its own soil.

But 18 years of hiding its nuclear work from the IAEA,
frequent evasions of IAEA probes since and a move last month to
resume suspended nuclear fuel research and small-scale
enrichment paved the way to Saturday’s decision.

Germany, France and Britain, the “EU3″ that initiated the
resolution, said it put Iran on the Security Council agenda to
press Tehran into halting sensitive nuclear activity.

“This sends a further strong message to the Islamic
Republic of Iran, a message of concern … and a continuing
lack of confidence in Iran’s nuclear intentions,” said Peter
Jenkins, the British ambassador to the Vienna-based IAEA.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said in a
statement: “We hope the Iranian regime will heed this clear
message. The world will not stand by if Iran continues on the
path to a nuclear weapons capability.”

To head off Security Council action, Iran must halt
small-scale fuel enrichment, preserve spot IAEA checks and give
IAEA inspectors full access to nuclear officials, equipment and
related military sites, said Gregory Schulte, U.S. ambassador
to the agency.

In return, the West has offered Iran trade and political
incentives, but two years of talks on a deal have run aground.

“This vote will enable open discussion in the Security
Council on Iran but no formal debate on what to do about the
issue until after (IAEA chief Mohamed) ElBaradei submits his
broad assessment in March,” said an EU3 diplomat.

SNAP INSPECTIONS TO STOP

But Iran threw down the gauntlet after Saturday’s vote.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad ordered Tehran’s atomic
energy commission to halt short-notice IAEA checks of
nuclear-related installations and equipment from Sunday.

“All of Iran’s peaceful nuclear activities will continue
within the framework of the IAEA and based on the NPT and the
agency’s safeguards,” he said.

“From February 5, Iran will suspend its voluntary
implementation of the Additional Protocol and its other
cooperation beyond it.”

Iranian IAEA envoy Ali Asghar Soltaniyeh said the “hasty
and immature” board decision would force Iran to move into
“commercial-scale” enrichment of uranium, the fuel for power
plants — or if purified to high levels — warheads.

Nuclear experts, however, question whether Iran has yet
developed the technology to move soon into large-scale
enrichment.

Iranian officials said the vote could destroy any basis for
talks on Russia’s proposal to defuse Iran’s standoff with the
West by taking in Iranian uranium for enrichment, in theory
preventing diversions to bomb-making.

Asked whether talks on the proposal were now off, Russian
ambassador to the IAEA Grigory Berdennikov said: “We have
spoken to the Iranians and the impression that we got was that
the proposal is still on the table and negotiations will
continue.”

But Chinese Ambassador Wu Hailongon stressed there was
still room for resolving concerns about Iran within the IAEA.

“China calls on all relevant parties to exercise restraint
and patience and refrain from taking any action that might
further complicate and deteriorate the situation,” he said.

COUNCIL ACTION TO COME SLOWLY

Rare consensus between the permanent powers on the Security
Council — Britain, France, the United States, Russia and China
– over Iran reached last week made the vote possible. Moscow
and Beijing hindered U.S.-led attempts at previous IAEA board
meetings to report Iran to the Council.

Concrete Security Council action is likely to come slowly,
if at all, given stubborn divisions among its permanent members
over the utility of sanctions against Iran, the world’s fourth
largest oil exporter.

Beijing and Moscow, keen to preserve energy trade with
Iran, oppose moves toward punitive sanctions, raising the risk
of the Iranian nuclear issue stalling in the Security Council.

Diplomats and analysts critical of Saturday’s resolution
pointed to the first repercussions, saying that without snap
inspections, the IAEA’s ability to monitor Iranian nuclear work
will be impaired.

“Reporting Iran to the Security Council has created a
vacuum of confidence-building, a situation ElBaradei was intent
on avoiding,” said Greenpeace nuclear analyst William Peden.

“There will no winners in this dispute. All diplomatic
initiatives will be dead in the water.”

ElBaradei has said a “window of opportunity” remains until
March in which a diplomatic solution to the crisis is possible.

Cuba, Venezuela and Syria, all U.S. adversaries, voted
against the resolution, while Indonesia, Algeria, Belarus,
South Africa and Libya abstained.

(Additional reporting by Parisa Hafezi and Paul Hughes in
Tehran; Saul Hudson in Washington)