The United Nations Security Council on Wednesday issued a formal demand for Iran to drop its uranium enrichment efforts, which the West suspects is a cover for a nuclear weapons programme. The statement, passed unanimously, called on the UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, to report back in 30 days on Tehran’s compliance, but did not make clear what the council would do if Iran refused to cooperate.
That will top the agenda at a meeting on Thursday, where the United States Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, Britain’s Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, and their counterparts from France, Germany, Russia and China will attempt to hammer out a consensus approach to Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
The security council statement was agreed just in time for the Berlin meeting after three weeks of arguments. It was clinched after last-minute telephone calls between Rice and the Russian Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov. The Russians and Chinese governments, wary from the experience of the build-up to the Iraq invasion, had opposed any language in the statement that could be interpreted as a UN mandate for US-led military action.
Moscow and Beijing agreed to the wording of the statement only after the removal of a provision stating that the council was responsible for international peace and security, which they feared could be used as a justification for armed action. The final statement does not commit the security council to any set course of action in the event of Iranian non-compliance. Russia and China are resisting threatening sanctions, which they believe could provoke an Iranian backlash and a rise in international tension.
The US, Britain and France believe that only concerted international pressure will persuade Tehran to suspend its uranium enrichment programme, which could be used to produce a warhead, as well as the nuclear fuel the Iranian government insists it is seeking to produce.
Both sides of the argument in the Ssecurity Council claimed victory on Wednesday. ”It sends an unmistakable message to Iran that its efforts to deny the obvious fact of what it’s doing are not going to be sufficient,” the US envoy, John Bolton, told journalists in New York. China’s UN ambassador, Wang Guangya, stressed that the statement put the issue, for the time being, back in the hands of the IAEA, which Beijing sees as less incendiary than the more politicised security council.
The statement expressed the council’s ”serious concern” about aspects of the Iranian nuclear programme ”which could have a military nuclear dimension” and noted that ”the IAEA is unable to conclude that there are no undeclared nuclear materials or activities in Iran”. It adds that the full cessation of enrichment, combined with compliance with IAEA inspections and monitoring, would ”contribute to a diplomatic, negotiated solution that guarantees Iran’s nuclear programme is for exclusively peaceful purposes”.
The US and Britain managed to keep a stipulation that the IAEA director general, Mohamed ElBaradei, report back to the security council in 30 days, which will require the council’s permanent five members to confront the problem once more in the event of Iranian defiance. – Guardian Unlimited Â