Signals Indicate Iran Will Be Reported to Security Council

By John Ward Anderson
February 3, 2006
The Washington Post
Original Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/02/AR2006020200298.html

VIENNA, Feb. 2 -- The 35-member board of the U.N. atomic agency began debate Thursday of a resolution to report Iran to the U.N. Security Council for nuclear treaty violations, with signs that a solid majority would back the measure.
During closed-door meetings of the International Atomic Energy Agency's governing board, only two countries -- Syria and Cuba -- said they would vote against reporting Iran, according to a diplomat who attended the sessions. A third country, Venezuela, indicated it also might oppose the measure, he said. He would not be quoted by name because the board meetings are officially confidential.
The main question hanging over Thursday's deliberations was how the 16 members of the Non-Aligned Movement, a group dating from the Cold War, would vote. Diplomats said the group had not reached a consensus and would meet Friday morning to continue discussions. A vote of the full board on whether to report Iran could come in the afternoon, they said.
Diplomats said that the sentiment in favor of reporting Iran had gained broader backing because of an agreement reached Monday between the five permanent members of the Security Council -- the United States, Britain, France, Russia and China -- and Germany. They are all supporting a resolution that calls for reporting Iran to the council but deferring any action until at least March 6, when the head of the IAEA is to deliver a status report on Iran's nuclear program and the country's cooperation with the agency.
That grace period will offer Iran a window of opportunity during which it can change tactics, stop uranium enrichment activities and demonstrate that it will be more forthcoming with information about its nuclear programs, according to IAEA Director General Mohammed ElBaradei.
Iran still has a month to move forward and show full transparency, ElBaradei said outside the boardroom Thursday. But, he added, A majority of the board are making it clear that Iran needs to go back into full suspension of uranium enrichment activities.
As a signatory of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, Iran has the right to enrich uranium, and says it wants to do so to produce nuclear energy for electricity. But highly enriched uranium can also be used to build nuclear bombs, which the United States and Europe say is Iran's real intention.
Iran's decision to resume enrichment research and development last month -- after a two-year, voluntary suspension -- prompted Britain, Germany and France to call for Thursday's extraordinary session of the IAEA board.
According to country statements distributed to reporters outside the meeting, numerous ambassadors highlighted their concern about Iran's resumption of enrichment research, saying it was provocative and had undermined their confidence in Iran's intentions.
The suspension was the central component of Iran's reassurances to the international community that its nuclear program is purely for peaceful purposes, Singapore's ambassador, Burhan Gafoor, told the board.
The proposed resolution is vague about whether the IAEA board would have to vote on the issue again before the council could act.
The Non-Aligned Movement, in a statement read by the Malaysian ambassador, Rajmah Hussain, said it thinks that a second vote for a referral, after ElBaradei's report in March, would be legally necessary. That analysis could allow its members to support the U.S. and European position and vote for the resolution being offered, on grounds it would not be a final move.
A.A. Soltanieh, the Iranian ambassador, told the board that his country had a right to develop peaceful nuclear technologies. He argued that Iran had shown tremendous progress in our cooperation with the IAEA and was ready to remove ambiguities on its nuclear activities.
In a separate letter to ElBaradei, Ali Larijani, secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council and its chief nuclear negotiator, repeated a warning that a law passed by Iran's parliament provides that if the country were reported to the United Nations, it would have no other choice but to suspend a program of unannounced nuclear inspections by the IAEA.
Furthermore, all peaceful nuclear activities being voluntarily suspended would be resumed without any restriction, he wrote. Those activities, Iranian officials have made clear, include large-scale uranium enrichment.