As Washington and London pressed for a more aggressive stance, Moscow backed off a proposal it had made to allow Iran to process small amounts of nuclear fuel.

“This is a test for the council,” said Washington’s UN ambassador, John Bolton. If Tehran does not comply with U.S. demands, he said, “we will have to make a decision of what the next step will be.” He suggested that if the Security Council did not take aggressive enough action, U.S. officials might try to get its allies to impose sanctions.

The U.S. government has been waging its campaign against Iran on the claim that Tehran is developing nuclear weapons. Iranian officials insist that the country needs to develop nuclear technology to meet its growing energy needs, a position widely supported among Iranians.

At a March 9 Congressional hearing, U.S. secretary of state Condoleezza Rice said, “We may face no greater challenge from a single country than from Iran, whose policies are directed at developing a Middle East that would be 180 degrees different than the [one] we would like to see developed.” Two days later U.S. president George Bush branded Iran a “grave national security concern.”

Rice had announced in February that Washington is making $75 million available for opposition groups in Iran. “A State Department official yesterday said that no recipients could be affiliated in any way with the regime or a group listed as a foreign terrorist organization,” reported the March 8 New York Sun.

Earlier, Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the UN International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), citing ongoing negotiations between representatives of the European Union (EU) and the Iranian government, said that Tehran had offered to suspend industrial-scale enrichment of uranium for two years, and that it might agree to a further extension if permitted to run a small-scale enrichment research program. The EU powers have demanded that Iran agree to a 10-year moratorium on all uranium enrichment.

Negotiations between Tehran and London, Paris, and Berlin—known as the EU 3—broke down at the end of 2005.

Last February the EU 3 and most other members of the IAEA board of governors, including China and Russia, approved a resolution to refer Iran’s nuclear program to the Security Council but to delay any action for one month. Only Cuba, Syria, and Venezuela voted against.
 
 
Related articles:
Kurds in Iraq make headway toward winning greater autonomy  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home