The main European powers on Friday called an emergency meeting of the United Nation’s nuclear authority to try to chart a way out of an escalating crisis with Iran over its nuclear ambitions.
The 35-strong board of the International Atomic Energy Agency is to meet on Tuesday in Vienna after Britain, France and Germany took the unusual step of calling an extraordinary session.
That came after the EU troika on Friday made an unprecedented and detailed offer to Tehran of trade, political, security and nuclear benefits if Iran renounces enrichment of uranium — the main path to a nuclear weapons capability.
The EU countries pledged long-term supplies of nuclear technology, reactors and fuel for a civil nuclear programme in Iran on condition that Iran effectively abandons its largely secret 20-year-old project to manufacture nuclear fuel, the process that can also produce weapons-grade uranium.
The offer also vows no military strikes against Iranian targets — a pledge that Washington is also expected to observe tacitly — if the Iranians climb down from a dangerous showdown with the West by scrapping uranium enrichment.
The government of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, being sworn in on Saturday, however, is widely expected to reject the EU proposals — two years in the making — and to call the EU’s bluff on how to react.
The EU three reiterated this week that they would drop two years of resisting US calls to take Iran to the UN security council in New York for possible sanctions if their offer is rejected or if Iran ends its freeze on uranium enrichment.
Next week’s meeting in Vienna and the formula that emerges could bring that decision to move the Iranian dispute from the conference rooms of the UN tower in Vienna to the security council in New York.
The trigger for such a decision is likely to be pulled in the southern town of Isfahan where the Iranians are threatening to break the UN seals on equipment for processing uranium and resume a conversion programme frozen last November under a deal with the EU troika.
UN nuclear inspectors are in Isfahan to monitor the situation, but the Vienna agency is also playing for time in an attempt to defuse the crisis.
The Iranians have agreed not to break the seals until the inspectors have surveillance equipment in place. That equipment has not even left Vienna yet and it will be several days before it is set up.
Dr Mohammed ElBaradei, the IAEA chief, has also been unsuccessfully trying to persuade the Europeans not to call the emergency meeting since he fears resort to the security council will be ”a cul de sac” and could ignite a much bigger crisis with a breakdown in negotiations.
That could result in a scenario similar to North Korea which unilaterally and summarily withdrew from the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT), kicked out the UN nuclear inspectors, and pursued the bomb.
Precisely to forestall such a scenario, Friday’s EU offer demands that Iran give a binding commitment not to pull out of the NPT. The detailed 34-page proposal entitled Framework for a Long-term Agreement also says Iran has no need to enrich uranium to produce fuel for a civil nuclear programme since the Europeans would supply the equipment and fuel needed.
The Iranians have consistently stated they will not renounce uranium enrichment, permitted under their NPT commitments, and also that they would swiftly reject the EU proposals unless the Europeans acknowledged the Iranian right to enrich uranium.
The Iranians suspended uranium enrichment in November pending the outcome of the talks with the EU now coming to a head.
On Friday European officials described their offer as ”ambitious and generous”, possibly opening ”a new chapter” in the West’s relations with Iran.
”I hope that Iran will hear the voice of reason and that it will take the path of negotiation and dialogue, and that it will not move toward a resumption of nuclear activities,” said the French Foreign Minister, Philippe Douste-Blazy.
The escalation of the nuclear dispute presents a formidable challenge for the new president. President Ahmadinejad is expected to replace several of his key nuclear negotiators when he announces his Cabinet on Saturday. – Guardian Unlimited Â