September 19, 2005

CORRECTED - EU powers start work on Iran nuclear resolution

By Teruaki Ueno and Jack Kim

In VIENNA story headlined "EU powers start work on Iran nuclear resolution" please read in third paragraph ....Ahmadinejad.... instead of Ahmedinejad (corrects spelling).

A corrected repetition follows:

By Louis Charbonneau

VIENNA (Reuters) - The European Union's three biggest powers began drafting a resolution on Sunday urging the U.N. nuclear watchdog to report Tehran to the Security Council for possible sanctions, EU diplomats said.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told the U.N. General Assembly on Saturday that Tehran was determined to press ahead with making nuclear fuel. The West fears that Iran's nuclear programme could be used to produce atomic weapons.

Disappointed at Ahmadinejad's stand, French, British and German officials decided to ask the International Atomic energy Agency (IAEA) to refer Iran to the U.N. Security Council, which could consider economic sanctions, diplomats said.

"The drafting of a resolution sending Iran to the Security Council has begun," a diplomat from one of the three EU countries, known as the EU3, told Reuters.

"Tonight the (EU3) political directors will meet to discuss the key elements of the resolution."

The 35-member governing board of the IAEA begins a crucial week-long meeting on Monday and the resolution will be submitted for a vote at the meeting.

Diplomats said the Iran issue had divided the IAEA board roughly into two camps -- developed Western countries including the European Union, the United States, Japan and Australia versus politically powerful emerging-market states such as India, China, Brazil, South Africa and Russia.

URANIUM CONVERSION PLANT

International pressure on Iran has increased since it broke U.N. seals and resumed work at a uranium conversion plant at Isfahan last month. Work there had been suspended under a November deal with the three EU countries.

Western countries accuse Iran, which hid its enrichment programme from the IAEA for 18 years, of covertly developing nuclear weapons. They say Tehran's secretiveness meant it had forfeited its right to technology that could be used for bombs.

Tehran says its programme is aimed solely at the peaceful generation of electricity and insists it must be able to produce its own nuclear fuel. Many developing states back Iran's right to a full nuclear programme and accuse the West of trying to prevent poor nations from having independent atomic programmes.

Iran, which has yet to resume enrichment work at its mothballed underground plant at Natanz, hinted that it might do so soon if the IAEA board reported it to the Security Council.

"We haven't started enrichment yet but everything depends on the result of tomorrow's meeting," Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi told a weekly news conference.

Officials from the EU3 states expressed disappointment with the stand taken by Ahmadinejad, who not only rejected Western calls that it suspend all sensitive nuclear work but invited countries and corporations to become joint-venture partners in its uranium enrichment programme.

"This was a disappointing and unhelpful speech by President Ahmadinejad," British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw told BBC TV.

German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer expressed similar sentiments, saying: "It was anything but helpful."

French Defence Minister Michele Alliot-Marie said in interview with Europe 1 radio: "What is happening in Iran is actually extremely worrying. Not that we need to deny Iran the right to have nuclear means for civil applications...but from there to say that a new country can have nuclear weapons is something very worrying."

But on arrival back at Tehran airport, Ahmadinejad said his New York trip had been a success.

"We think we have opened the way for a good outcome with the IAEA, so now anyone who wants to make trouble will just be using excuses as a pretext for doing so," he told reporters.

Chief nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani said the threat of Security Council referral would only worsen the situation.

"We think that negotiations do not mean anything if they are conducted under pressure," he said. "We cannot negotiate and be threatened at the same time."

SENSITIVE ACTIVITIES

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Iran's nuclear programme was a serious threat to global security and the Security Council must deal with it unless Iran ended sensitive activities and resumed talks with the EU.

"Iran should return to negotiations with the EU3 and abandon forever its plans for a nuclear weapons capability," she said.

Of the 14 IAEA board members belonging to the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), only two -- Singapore and Peru -- have said they would back a U.N. referral.

Western diplomats say they can count on at least 20 of the 35 votes to support a referral of Iran. Although it is a sufficient majority, they would prefer stronger backing.

IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei, fearing a permanent split of his agency's board, has urged the EU3 and the United States to give Iran another chance to comply with demands that it refrain from all sensitive nuclear activites.

However, EU diplomats said the 14 NAM countries were considering the option of abstaining as a bloc. This would enable countries like India, Pakistan and South Africa to avoid angering Washington and the EU by voting against them.

"The only die-hard pro-Iranian countries at this point are Russia and Venezuela," an EU diplomat said.

The Security Council has the power to take action against Iran ranging from a verbal reprimand to a total trade ban. However, sanctions are considered a remote prospect.

(Additional reporting by Paris Hafezi and Alireza Ronaghi in Tehran, Madeline Cambers in London, and bureaux in Berlin and at the United Nations)

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