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IAEA votes to report Iran to UN Security Council

Posted on: Saturday, 4 February 2006, 15:36 CST

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)

Source: REUTERS

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