Major powers to coax Iran on nuclear offer at IAEA

By Mark Heinrich

VIENNA (Reuters) – Iran said on Wednesday there was no
world consensus pushing it to stop enriching nuclear fuel, but
major powers trying to achieve this hoped a low-key approach at
a U.N. nuclear watchdog debate would broaden their support.

The Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) of 114 mainly developing
states, one of them Iran, ignored U.S. calls to endorse the
powers’ June 6 offer to Tehran of a package of incentives to
end a uranium enrichment program that could yield atomic bombs.

The powers — the five U.N. Security Council permanent
members plus Germany — hoped a debate on Thursday of the
International Atomic Energy Agency’s governing board would help
persuade Iran to accept their offer — though Tehran insists it
has the right to enrich uranium.

“We will be keeping our statements to the board low-key to
encourage Iran to come up with a positive response,” said a
diplomat from the “EU3″ group — Britain, France and Germany —
that conceived the incentives.

The package includes a possible resort to U.N. sanctions if
Iran refuses to shelve enrichment, but plays this down and sets
no deadlines.

Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki told his
Italian counterpart the offer was “a significant change of
approach toward Iran.”

But a more powerful security official, top atomic
negotiator Ali Larijani, has laid more stress on “problems”
tied to a precondition that Iran mothball all uranium
enrichment, which it rules out.

EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana told a Brussels news
conference he had had “a constructive conversation” by
telephone with Larijani on Wednesday, but gave no details.

The six powers have given Iran until a Group of 8
industrialized nations summit in mid-July to respond to the
package, diplomats said.

SOVEREIGN RIGHT

Iran says its atomic drive is meant to generate electricity
and cites a sovereign right to civilian nuclear energy.

The West, noting Iran has the world’s second largest oil
and gas reserves, suspects Tehran secretly wants to build
nuclear bombs because it hid its enrichment research from the
IAEA for almost 20 years and has called for Israel’s
destruction.

“Once a country has enriched uranium to a level necessary
for nuclear power, that uranium is 70 percent of the way to
being usable for nuclear weapons,” a Western diplomat said.

The incentives on offer include guaranteeing a supply of
uranium enriched abroad for Iranian reactors. But Iran produced
a small amount of low-enriched uranium for the first time in
April and declared it could not be denied its own enrichment
program.

On Thursday, the IAEA board is due to debate reports by its
director, Mohamed ElBaradei, citing Iran’s obstruction of IAEA
probes into its nuclear program and refusal to heed the
Security Council’s call for a halt to enrichment.

U.S. and European diplomats said their priority was to give
Iran space to accept the incentives package by toning down
rhetoric that could back it into a corner.

An EU statement to be read to the board said “international
concerns about Iran’s nuclear program remain to be resolved and
repeated requests by the board remain to be fulfilled.”

But the four-paragraph statement avoided accusations,
urging Iran only “to respond positively” to the offer.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao urged Iran
to support the package. “Iran is looking at it very seriously,”
Liu told reporters at a meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation
Organization. “We hope all sides will come up with a positive
response … so we can create conditions favorable for the
resumption of negotiations.”

Washington, trying to soften Iranian allegations of a big
power plot against it, nudged members of the NAM that are on
the IAEA board to back the “carrot and stick” plan.

But NAM states, comprising 15 of the 35 nations on the
board, intended to repeat a May 30 declaration stressing an
“inviolable” right to civilian nuclear energy for fellow member
Iran.

(Additional reporting by Silvia Aloisi in Rome)