EU, US press for UN action on Iran nuclear plans

By Louis Charbonneau

VIENNA (Reuters) – The European Union and the United States
pressed the U.N. atomic watchdog on Monday to bring Iran’s
nuclear programme before the Security Council over suspicions
it wants atomic bombs, but Russia called for a delay.

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, which began meeting on
Monday, to report Iran to the U.N. Security Council after it
resumed sensitive 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 on Monday, 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
EU meeting in Vienna. “The real problem is Russia. It will be
difficult to convince the Russians.”

At a breakfast meeting with EU foreign ministers in New
York, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov urged them to
consider delaying their plan to involve the U.N.’s highest
body.

Lavrov made the appeal on the sidelines of the U.N. General
Assembly, saying it was vital to maintain the unity of the
international community to put pressure on Iran, two European
participants, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Reuters.
Lavrov did not rule out backing a referral later, they said.

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 run a peaceful nuclear programme
to generate electricity. Iran denies it is seeking atomic
bombs.

IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei also called on Iran and the EU
trio to avoid confrontation and return to the negotiating
table.

One EU diplomat said it was unclear if the EU powers would
want to put their resolution to a vote if Moscow was against
it. In this case, he said they could submit it to the IAEA
board but delay any vote on it while continuing to pressure the
Iranians.

U.S. SAYS U.N. REPORT “LONG OVERDUE”

The United States, which has long accused Tehran of seeking
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,” U.S. ambassador to the IAEA Gregory Schulte told
Reuters.

“The board had wanted Iran to pursue a course of
cooperation and negotiation,” Schulte said about two years of
EU-Iran talks, which collapsed last month. “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 refreeze its entire uranium enrichment programme.

Iran, however vowed on Monday to press ahead with its
nuclear fuel programme after President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, in
a speech to the U.N. General Assembly on Saturday, branded
Western efforts to restrict it as “nuclear apartheid.”

The official IRNA news agency on Monday quoted Ali
Larijani, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security
Council, as saying Tehran refused to bow to pressure. “We will
continue our nuclear activities in the framework of the IAEA
regulations.”

Twelve of 14 IAEA board members from the Non-Aligned
Movement, who met on Monday to forge a common position,
believed Iran’s case should be resolved within the IAEA,
diplomats said, with only Peru and Singapore ready to back a
referral.

“Everybody would like to avoid a contentious debate in the
Security Council,” Indian Foreign Minister Natwar Singh,
speaking in New York, told NDTV television news.

The Iran issue has split IAEA board members between Western
countries favoring tough action and emerging economies which
accuse the West of trying to deprive poor nations of
independent nuclear programs.

Western countries say that since Iran hid its uranium
enrichment programme from the IAEA for 18 years, the only way
it can prove it is not seeking nuclear bombs is permanently to
renounce sensitive nuclear technology altogether.

(Additional reporting by Francois Murphy in Vienna and Paul
Taylor at the United Nations)