Fallout of war casts shadow over UN talks on Iran sanctions
By Harvey Morris 
August 26. 2008 
The Financial Times
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The permanent members of the United Nations Security Council are to begin discussions next month on a new set of sanctions designed to rein in Iran's nuclear ambitions, an issue with the potential to make the Georgia crisis look like a passing summer squall.
How those talks fare is likely to depend on the extent to which Russian actions in the Caucasus and the western response damage the broader international consensus.
Russia's stance on Iran and on other issues, such as whether despite misgivings it remains a member of the international Quartet on the Middle East, will also provide early pointers to any new sanctions.
The post-Soviet stance of Moscow at the Security Council has generally been one of qualified co-operation with its western partners.
At times it swallowed its reservations in order to remain within the fold. On the Middle East, for example, it was unhappy that the UN went along with US and European members of the Quartet by banning contacts with Hamas, the Islamic group that runs Gaza. However, even before the Georgia crisis the strategies of the western powers, which Moscow perceived as interventionist, were coming up against the Kremlin's new-found assertiveness in foreign affairs.
Always a cautious partner in the policy of applying incremental pressure on Tehran to force it to suspend uranium enrichment, Russia could - post-Georgia - decide to use its veto at the Security Council to squash further global measures that would have been binding on UN members.
As a near neighbour of Iran, Russia has an interest in ensuring it does not acquire a nuclear bomb. But the level of its co-operation might depend on how it
perceives its relationships after the backlash over its actions in the Caucasus.
A defection by Russia from the current UN sanctions strategy would be a blow to efforts to resolve the Iran deadlock by diplomacy, while any withdrawal from the Quartet could signal a return to rival power politics in the Middle East.
Diplomats at the UN caution against confusing political theatre with a return to the politics of the cold war. Relationships within the Security Council are less black and white than in the Soviet era. The Europeans, for example, defused an early US-drafted resolution on Georgia that would have pushed Russia into a corner from which it would have been forced to cast its veto.
And despite an otherwise united front against Russia's military action, some Europeans barely disguised their impatience at Georgia for its role in prompting the crisis. Condemnation of Russia's disproportionate response was carefully phrased, said a European ambassador, implying Russia would have been forgiven for making a more proportionate response to what it termed as Georgian aggression.
A turning point in relations at the Security Council came with Kosovo's declaration of independence in February, which Moscow argued flouted UN resolutions. Russia criticised the decision of Ban Ki-Moon, UN secretary-general, to accept the fait accompli by winding down the UN administration in Kosovo.
At the time the west dismissed a warning from Vitaly Churkin, Moscow's UN envoy, that the Kosovo declaration would encourage other separatist movements, including those in South Ossetia and Ab-khazia. Russian MPs voted yesterday to recognise the two enclaves as independent states.
Russian disgruntlement festered during the spring, marked by its veto of western-proposed sanctions against Robert Mugabe's regime in Zimbabwe in a week when Moscow had been pressing for more Security Council engagement in the deteriorating situation in Georgia. Lack of consensus on Zimbabwe and differences about how to deal with regimes such as Burma and Sudan dented the effectiveness of the Security Council on a range of issues.
An awkward squad among its 10 temporary members - which, depending on the topic at hand, includes Libya, South Africa, Indonesia and Vietnam - has sought to head off western-sponsored intervention in conflicts from Zimbabwe to Burma that they regard as interference in the internal affairs of sovereign states.
But they cannot be counted on to support Russia. When it came to Georgia, they maintained their anti-interventionist position. Moscow found no council allies prepared publicly to justify its actions.