Major powers on Tuesday again failed to agree on a European package of targeted UN sanctions against Iran over its refusal to halt sensitive nuclear fuel work amid strong US pressure for a vote before the weekend.
A slightly amended version of a draft sanctions resolution was circulated on Tuesday among the Security Council's 15 members, who also heard a briefing from the sponsors.
But after two informal bargaining sessions, envoys of the five veto-wielding members -- Britain, China, France, Russia and the US -- plus Germany were still unable to find common ground on two key elements of the draft.
"We still have some difficult problems to resolve," Russian UN Ambassador Vitaly Churkin told reporters, restating his opposition to the inclusion in the text's annex of a travel ban on 12 officials directly linked to Iran's nuclear and ballistic missile programs.
But Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad vowed Tuesday that Iran would respond with unspecified retaliation if the UN Security Council imposed the sanctions.
"The European countries should know that if they insist on preventing Iran's moves [in its nuclear work], we will consider this behavior a hostile act and we will react in return," he said in a speech broadcast on state TV.
Tehran spurned an Aug. 31 UN deadline to freeze uranium enrichment, a process which can provide fuel for nuclear reactors but also, in highly refined form, material for the core of a nuclear bomb.
Western powers suspect the Islamic Republic is seeking to acquire a nuclear weapons capability under the cover of its civilian nuclear program.
Tehran insists its nuclear ambitions are entirely peaceful and aimed at generating electricity.
Ahmadinejad on Tuesday predicted that Britain, Israel and the US would eventually disappear from the world like the Egyptian pharaonic kings.
"The oppressive powers will disappear while the Iranian people will stay. Any power that is close to God will survive while the powers who are far from God will disappear like the pharaohs," he said, Iranian news agencies reported.
Ahmadinejad's comments were the latest salvo by the president against the West and Israel. He has repeatedly predicted that Israel is doomed to disappear.
Also on Tuesday, the UN General Assembly voiced "serious concern" about what it said were widespread human rights abuses in Iran and appealed to Tehran to ensure full respect for those rights.
The body voted 72 in favor to 50 against with 55 abstentions to censure Iran.
The resolution slammed Iran for its "harassment, intimidation and persecution" of human right defenders, political opponents, religious dissenters, journalists, clerics, academics, union members and labor organizers.
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