The United Nations’s chief nuclear inspector, Mohamed ElBaradei, is calling on Iran to freeze nuclear fuel production for up to 10 years as a way of defusing the escalating confrontation between Iran and the west.
As the board of the International Atomic Energy Agency met in emergency session on Thursday to debate sending the Iranian dispute to the United Nations security council in New York, ElBaradei, the IAEA chief, said there was ”no urgency” for Iran to embark on enriching uranium and said Tehran had a ”window of opportunity” over the next few weeks for stepping back from a showdown with the West.
For the first time in three years of such meetings dominated by the Iranian dispute, the 35-strong board was expected to send the dispute to the security council, raising the ante after Russia and China, the most powerful opponents of such a move, joined the United States and Europeans in supporting such a decision earlier this week.
US and German officials emphasised on Thursday that hauling Iran before the Security Council would not mean resorting to prompt penalties against Iran.
”We are not now seeking sanctions or other punitive measures on Iran,” said the US delegate to the IAEA, Gregory Schulte. ”We seek a carefully calibrated approach in which the [Security] Council applies escalating measures on Iran’s regime.”
Speaking for the EU, the German ambassador, Herbert Honsowitz, also said there would be no rush to punish Iran for perceived recalcitrance on its nuclear programmes. ”The security council is not being asked at this stage to take any action,” said ElBaradei.
But reporting Iran to the council would be a victory for the US, which has been demanding such action for two years. A decision is almost certain on Friday after the Russian ambassador said on Thursday that Moscow had ”no problems” with an IAEA resolution drafted by the Europeans which takes the dispute to the council.
”The important thing is that this issue goes to New York, where it belongs politically. That’s what we expect to happen this weekend,” said a Western diplomat.
The security council is not expected to act on the dispute, however, for at least a month, giving Tehran a chance to climb down and accept a Russian compromise proposal under which fuel for Iran’s civil nuclear programme is manufactured not in Iran but in Russia. Iran insists on making its own fuel for what it maintains is a civil nuclear programme, but many countries suspect the aim is to obtain the knowhow and material for a bomb.
ElBaradei said there would be several critical meetings on the dispute over the next month. Behind the scenes, he is advising the Iranians to agree to a five- to 10-year freeze on uranium enrichment.
The proposal is being couched publicly as a transition period, at the end of which Iran would obtain international blessing for its domestic nuclear programmes if sufficient trust was built up.
”A 10-year moratorium is better than no moratorium at all,” said a western diplomat. A European source added that the EU did not rule out eventually agreeing to Iran’s enrichment programmes, although the central aim of Western diplomacy for the past two years has been to get Iran to forfeit uranium enrichment — the quickest and most reliable way to the bomb.
A senior IAEA official said, however, that Tehran had robustly rejected the ElBaradei proposal. Western diplomats fear that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is bent on generating a siege mentality inside Iran towards the outside world.
The war of words looks likely to worsen. Iran is threatening retaliation against the UN inspectors as early as Saturday if the IAEA board sends the dispute to New York on Friday. – Guardian Unlimited Â