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Iran Found in Noncompliance With Nuclear Treaty Rules By Greg Webb WASHINGTON — In a divisive vote Saturday in Vienna, the International Atomic Energy Agency’s governing board charged Iran with violating its nuclear nonproliferation obligations and set the stage for sending the matter to the U.N. Security Council (see GSN, Sept. 22). A resolution of the 35-nation board formally “finds that Iran’s many failures and breaches of its obligations to comply with its [Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty] safeguards agreement … constitute noncompliance … of the agency’s statute.” IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei outlined several areas last week in which he said Iran has failed to provide adequate information about its nuclear activities, including efforts to develop uranium enrichment technology. The United States has accused Iran of trying to acquire nuclear weapons, while Tehran has insisted its programs are peaceful. This was only the second time the board has made such a finding of “noncompliance” during a nuclear dispute — North Korea being the other case — and the determination appears to require the board the report Iran to the U.N. Security Council at some point in the future. When that would occur remains a major point of contention that will probably be the focus of the board’s next meeting in late November. For the first time ever, the board failed to find consensus when approving a resolution on nuclear safeguards. Twenty-two mostly Western nations voted to pass the measure. Venezuela alone opposed the resolution, while Russia, China and 10 other nations abstained. “Of course, it would have been better to have a united board to send an absolute, unanimous message to Iran, but I still think the message is quite clear,” ElBaradei told reporters Saturday. “It is still a valid decision, adopted in accordance with due process.” “The international community sent a message to Iran that it is not satisfied with the pace and level of cooperation with the IAEA,” ElBaradei said. “The international community is also not satisfied with the level of confidence-building measures Iran has taken so far. I think the overall focus of the resolution … calls on Iran to accelerate its cooperation in resolving the outstanding issues [and to] accelerate the measures they can take to build confidence.” Iran objected strongly to the board’s decision and renewed its threat not to ratify the Additional Protocol to its nuclear safeguards agreement. The protocol, which Iran has signed and adhered to so far, permits international nuclear inspectors to conduct more intrusive monitoring of Iran’s nuclear activities than allowed by standard rules. “The resolution is illegal, illogical and politically motivated,” said Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki on Iranian state television, according to the Associated Press. “Iran has no legal commitment to continue implementation of the Additional Protocol.” The resolution’s use of the term “noncompliance” would appear to force the agency board to report Iran to the U.N. Security Council. Article 7 of the agency’s statute says that after finding a case of noncompliance, the board “shall report the noncompliance to all members and to the Security Council and General Assembly of the United Nations.” The timing and content of the report, however, would remain at the discretion of the Board of Governors. Only one other country, North Korea, has been reported to the council for noncompliance as a result of an existing disagreement with the agency. Three other nations, Iraq, Libya and Romania, have also been reported to the council, but not in the midst of a crisis. Iraq was reported after being vanquished in the 1991 Gulf War and the other two were reported after they voluntarily disclosed past violations to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. The resolution also refers specifically to another section of the statute that says, “If in connection with the activities of the agency there should arise questions that are within the competence of the Security Council, the agency shall notify the Security Council, as the organ bearing the main responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security.” The board has never before invoked this section of the statute, warning the council of a situation that potentially threatens international peace and stability. Resolution backers hope that Iran will heed the board and improve its cooperation with the agency. Specifically, the resolution “urges Iran to implement transparency measures” requested by ElBaradei, to restore the suspension of all uranium enrichment activities, to end construction of a heavy-water research reactor, and to ratify Tehran’s Additional Protocol to its nuclear safeguards agreement. Many officials in Vienna said last week that beginning the process of Security Council referral was pointless without the support of Russia and China, both of which hold veto power on the council. Other officials, however, said the United States hoped that those nations would have a difficult time rejecting calls for increased Iranian cooperation in such a public forum. Last week, three European Nation nations circulated a draft resolution that explicitly called for reporting Iran to the council, which would have the authority to impose a wide variety of penalties, including economic sanctions, against Tehran. The document passed Saturday is less direct in moving the matter to the Security Council. The decision by the three — France, Germany and the United Kingdom — to introduce the later version of the resolution Friday night followed two days of haggling among the 35 board members. The mood in the boardroom Friday was extremely contentious, the worst in several years, said one diplomat close to the agency. Many countries — including Russia, China, and the nonaligned nations — complained that they were being given insufficient time to review the proposed resolution. “They all pleaded for more time. Many said there would be no one in their capitals to give them instructions,” said the diplomat. European officials replied that the resolution’s language had been informally “in circulation for some time and that they saw no further reason for delay,” added the diplomat. Part of the difficulty facing EU officials in persuading the rest of the 35-member board came from disagreements among themselves. They were “in a state of disarray” late last week, said one Western diplomat familiar with the situation. The three EU leaders were for two days unable to agree on how to address the crisis, the diplomat said. British diplomats, backed strongly by the United States, had pushed for the first draft resolution that called for reporting Iran immediately to the Security Council. The United States has been pushing for such a move since ElBaradei first said in late 2003 that Iran had not provided a complete account of its nuclear activities. The EU nations did not join the push until their talks with Iran collapsed last month. France tried late last week to find a formulation that would “include the concept of noncompliance but not the word,” said the Western diplomat. Excluding the exact term would remove the implied requirement to report Iran to the council. That effort failed to find the support of British diplomats. They required that any resolution language contain the concept of “definite automaticity,” that is, certain reporting to the Security Council, said a European diplomat involved in the negotiations. Germany, meanwhile, has been the least aggressive of the three, with the Western diplomat suggesting that Berlin would prefer to avoid the situation altogether.
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