A unanimous UN Security Council vote to condemn North Korea's missile launches has set an important precedent and strengthened the powerful UN body as it turns to its next challenge: confronting Iran's suspect nuclear program, diplomats said.
Sometime this week, the council will take up Iran's continued refusal to respond formally to Western incentives to stop enriching uranium. Council members will be united like they have rarely been since 2003, when the US decision to invade Iraq opened up deep suspicions that still linger.
Diplomats said the success on delivering a tough message on North Korea will carry over when the Iran talks begin.
"We need unity of the council on these nonproliferation issues," French UN Ambassador Jean-Marc de La Sabliere said after the North Korea vote on Saturday. "So the fact that we have -- my view -- we have reached unity on the North Korean issue in the council I think will help us on Iran."
Diplomats negotiated the North Korea resolution over 11 tension-filled days, avoiding a threatened veto from China, which opposed any mention of the UN Charter's Chapter 7. Chapter 7 makes such resolutions legally binding and enforceable with military action.
Britain came up with compromise language that dropped the reference to Chapter 7 and allowed the 15 council members to vote for the resolution unanimously.
A Chinese veto would have soured the tone of negotiations over Iran, and widened divisions among the five permanent members -- the US, Britain, France, China and Russia. That likely would have banished any desire to compromise by either side.
The resolution on North Korea was weakened during the negotiations but still took crucial steps. It imposes limited sanctions, and diplomats believe it will strengthen nations' authority to interdict weapons shipments to and from North Korea.
Saturday's resolution was the first that the council passed on North Korea since 1993, a fact that US Ambassador John Bolton said Iran should remember.
"It's been 13 years since the Security Council got its act together sufficiently to act on North Korea and it's going to do so today in a unanimous fashion," he said before the vote on Saturday. "That's a very, very important political signal for any would-be proliferators."
Back in March, the council demanded that Iran suspend uranium enrichment. That requirement was conveyed in a simple council statement that was not legally binding -- the result of Chinese and Russian refusal to consider issuing a resolution, which would have been stronger.
After Iran refused to obey, Western powers presented the package of incentives last month meant to draw Iran back to negotiations and suspend enrichment.
Yet Iran said it needed more time to respond, leading frustrated world powers to agree last week to send Iran to the council for a firmer, perhaps legally binding, demand to suspend enrichment.
In a sign that Iran may fear a newly unified council, Tehran said on Sunday that the Western incentives to halt its nuclear program were an "acceptable basis" for talks, and it is ready for detailed negotiations.
That could be an attempt to sow new divisions in the council. Diplomats have said recent meetings with Iran have gone nowhere, and Tehran may want to buy time or exploit potential rifts.
There is also a danger of a different sort of precedent. The question of whether Pyongyang would obey any council demands hovered over the North Korea talks.
RSS