Europe and the United States pressed China and Russia on Monday to shed their reservations and agree to a tougher line on Iran that could see Tehran hauled before the United Nations Security Council over its suspected pursuit of nuclear weapons.
Senior officials from Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States — all permanent members of the UN Security Council — plus Germany were meeting behind closed doors in London as diplomatic efforts gathered pace.
They were aiming to coordinate policy after Iran, defying the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), broke seals on a nuclear facility last week in order to resume research on uranium enrichment after a voluntary suspension.
Britain, France and Germany, representing the European Union, joined the US in calling for the IAEA to refer Iran to the Security Council — a move that could potentially lead to sanctions.
But given their closer trade and energy links with Tehran, the focus is on Beijing and Moscow to add their weight to such a move ahead of an emergency meeting of IAEA governors in Vienna.
”Our hope is that the IAEA board will support a referral to the UN,” said a spokesperson for British Prime Minister Tony Blair as the senior officials converged on the Foreign Office for the talks, no details of which were given.
”We do detect a growing consensus behind that, but let’s see what happens,” the spokesperson said, adding: ”The international community will not be intimidated by Iran.”
Oil prices have risen over fears about the stand-off with the energy-rich nation, with the prices in London gaining 26 cents per barrel to $62,88 on Monday morning.
Iran insists its nuclear programme is strictly peaceful, but the IAEA says it has not been open and honest about its work, prompting worries that it is secretly trying to be the first nuclear-armed Muslim nation in the Middle East.
Enriched uranium can fuel nuclear reactors, but if highly enriched it can also form the explosive core of an atomic bomb.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, en route to Liberia, said on Monday she wants to see the board of the IAEA, the UN’s nuclear watchdog, convene ”as soon as possible”.
”The problem with waiting for the regular meeting in March or waiting for a long time is that I think the Iranians will try to take advantage of it to start to throw chaff now and to obfuscate” on its nuclear intentions, she said.
Referring to the London talks, a European diplomat said in Vienna: ”Maybe they will decide on a special [IAEA] board meeting, but I’m not sure they will specify that this is to take the issue to the UN Security Council.”
Another diplomat said the US would tell Russia in London that ”the best way of avoiding eventual international action from hurting Russian interests is for Moscow to pretend that it is on board for sanctions”.
”It’s kind of like playing poker,” he said. ”The Iranians have to believe they will be sanctioned.”
For China, a major concern is its relationship with Iran as a supplier of oil for its booming economy. Beijing is also, as a matter of principle, more wary than Western powers of the use of sanctions as a tool of foreign policy.
EU foreign-policy chief Javier Solana was to discuss Iran with UN Secretary General Kofi Annan in New York later on Monday, before seeing Rice and other US officials later in the week, his office in Brussels said.
In London, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw used a speech at a security conference to raise the danger of nuclear weapons falling into the hands of global terrorists.
”The onus is on Iran to act to give the international community confidence that its nuclear programme has exclusive peaceful purposes — confidence, I’m afraid, that has been sorely undermined by its history of concealment and deception.” — Sapa-AFP