Security Council moves toward Iran nuclear draft

Protesters hold up a picture of Maryam Rajavi, president of the National Council of Resistance of Iran who is exiled in Paris, as they demonstrate outside the UN in New York on Friday. Members of New York's Iranian community were protesting against the Iranian government, calling on the UN Security Council to impose immediate sanctions against the Iranian regime. PHOTO: AP

The Security Council is inching toward agreeing on a revised Franco-British draft urging Iran to suspend uranium enrichment, diplomats said on Friday as China suggested that Tehran be given up to six weeks to do so.

The 15-member council met for over one hour on Friday to review the revised text, which incorporated comments made by members after a series of informal sessions earlier this week. Members agreed to meet again on Tuesday after getting reactions from their capitals.

"The response we got from our colleagues today suggests that we are pretty close to where they wanted us to be," British UN envoy Emyr Jones Parry said.

"Our wish remains that the council should act expeditiously on this text and send the clearest possible signal [to Tehran] ... to reinforce the activities of the [International Atomic Energy Agency] Agency," he added.

French Ambassador Jean-Marc de La Sabliere also said he was "encouraged by the reaction" to the revised text, which he noted was "getting a lot of support."

"The response we got from our colleagues today suggests that we are pretty close to where they wanted us to be."

British UN envoy, Emyr Jones Parry

"We are not very far now from the end of the discussion," the French envoy said, adding the co-sponsors were awaiting reactions from other members' capitals to the text. "I hope the reactions will be positive."

Elements the revised draft released on Friday said the UN nuclear watchdog would report "to the Security Council as well as to the IAEA board of governors, in [14] days on Iranian compliance with the requirements set out by the IAEA board".

These include suspending immediately all uranium enrichment activities and resuming implementation of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty's Additional Protocol that allows for wider inspections of a country's nuclear facilities.

But speaking before the meeting, Chinese ambassador Wang Guangya (王光亞) said the 14-day deadline was too short.

"We must leave sufficient time for diplomacy and for the IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency] to work ... at least four weeks to six weeks," he noted.

The US ambassador to the UN, John Bolton, responded: "I don't think there's really been much support to go beyond a month," adding, however, that there was some flexibility on the US side on this point.

Russian Minister Sergei Lavrov, in an interview with the Financial Times on Friday, also dismissed the 14-day period as "not very feasible".

Lavrov he saw "a parallel" between the current Iranian crisis and the run-up to the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 when the Security Council intervened before UN inspectors had done their job.

"We would not like to see the situation where the value of the professional agencies would be underestimated ... at the expense of us getting to the bottom of the facts," Lavrov said.

Russia's UN envoy Andrei Denisov welcomed the Franco-British draft's reference to the need for IAEA head Mohamed ElBaradei to send his report on Iranian compliance to both the Security Council and the IAEA board of governors.

But he also rejected a quick progress report on Iran's nuclear program, saying -- half in jest -- that fast action could lead to the bombing of Iran by June.

"Let's just imagine that we adopt it and today we issued that statement -- then what happens after two weeks?" Denisov said. "In such a pace we'll start bombing in June."

Denisov after he made the remark, but it reflected Russia's fears that the international community has not yet decided how to respond if Iran continues to resist demands that it make explicitly clear it is not seeking nuclear arms.

Meanwhile Wang said a meeting of senior foreign ministry officials of the Security Council's five permanent members and Germany in New York tomorrow aimed to "consider the next step of activities by the IAEA".

US Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, Nicholas Burns, and his counterparts from China, France, Russia and Britain, which are permanent members of the Security Council and have veto-wielding power, plus Germany, will attend the meeting, a State Department official said on Thursday.