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China, Russia Back Sending Iranian Nuclear Crisis to U.N.
China and Russia have agreed to sign on to a Western-led effort to report Iran’s nuclear dossier to the U.N. Security Council, the Associated Press reported today (see GSN, Jan. 30). However, the ministers also agreed that the council should wait until March, when the agency is expected to release a formal report on Iran’s nuclear activities, to take any action. The agency would “report on the situation in Iran and the way the Iranian authorities are not cooperating with the international agency,” said a French official. He said Russian and Chinese officials had been reluctant to agree on moving the matter to the council, but were persuaded to show a united front with the three other permanent Security Council members — France, the United Kingdom and the United States. “It was very important to make sure they are all together on this issue and all agree on the same position,” the official said. Tehran said referral would undercut opportunities for a negotiated settlement. “Referring or reporting Iran’s dossier to the U.N. Security Council will be unconstructive and the end of diplomacy,” said chief nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani (Anne Gearan, Associated Press I/Yahoo!News, Jan. 31). Russia had initially proposed having the issue sent to the Security Council in a less formal manner that would inhibit action, the New York Times reported today. The “clear implication” of the statement signed by the Chinese and Russian foreign ministers, however, was that their nations would vote in favor of referral, a U.S. official told the Times (Steven Weisman, New York Times, Jan. 31). The head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Agency said there was no legal justification for Security Council referral, the Associated Press reported today. “The biggest problem for the West is that they can’t find any (legal) justification to refer Iran to the U.N. Security Council,” said Gholamreza Aghazadeh (Ali Akbar Dareini, Associated Press II/Bergensavisen, Jan. 31). U.S. President George W. Bush said he would use his annual State of the Union speech tonight to criticize Iranian leaders, Agence France-Presse reported. “The message is: Give up your nuclear weapons ambitions,” Bush said yesterday. “We’re united in our goal to keep the Iranians from having a weapon, and we’re working on the tactics necessary to continue putting a united front out,” he said, referring to the world powers meeting in London (Agence France-Presse I/Turkish Weekly, Jan. 31). U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said yesterday that “robust” negotiations with Iran remain necessary, AP reported. “We believe that there is a lot of life left in the diplomacy,” she said. “After all, going to the Security Council is not the end of diplomacy. It’s just diplomacy in a different, more robust context” (David Stringer, Associated Press III/Yahoo!News, Jan. 31). Cuba, Malaysia and South Africa have announced their support for Iran’s right to develop nuclear energy technology, AFP reported yesterday. Following a meeting Friday in Pretoria between the three Nonaligned Movement countries and Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki, the nations released a statement “reaffirming the basic and inalienable right ... to develop nuclear technology for peaceful purposes, without any discrimination and in conformity with the” Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (Agence France-Presse II/IranMania.com, Jan. 30).
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