U.N. Powers Could Reveal Iran Sanctions Today

Leading U.N. Security Council nations could share their proposal for new sanctions against Iran with the rest of the council today, Reuters reported (see GSN, March 13).

The five permanent members and Germany have nearly completed a draft resolution to punish Iran for its refusal to freeze its nuclear program.

“There are no difficulties.  There are just one or two issues to resolve,” British Ambassador Emyr Jones Parry said yesterday.

The almost-daily talks among the six nations have begun to make other council members feel ignored, so they have asked to see a draft resolution “whether it is agreed or not,” said council president Ambassador Dumisani Kumalo of South Africa.

“It is coming to a point where it marginalizes the rest of the members [if the six nations] continue to discuss this endlessly among themselves,” Kumalo said.

The six have reached agreement on the major features of the resolution, but some have sought additional clarifications, Reuters reported.

China, for example, has asked for more details on a new group of individuals and institutions that would have their assets frozen.

“Many of us, including China, are not sure about all those entities because the objective is to target the nuclear and (ballistic) missile activities” said Chinese Ambassador Wang Guangya.  “But now with so many names, we don't know whether they are linked to these activities or not” (Evelyn Leopold, Reuters I, March 14).

The issue was “one of the trickiest issues that we're still discussing,” confirmed acting U.S. Ambassador Alejandro Wolff, who said the new targets included companies controlled by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard (Edith Lederer, Associated Press I/FoxNews.com, March 13).

Some diplomats said they believed the remaining differences could be resolved in time to bring the resolution to a council vote this weekend, according to Reuters (Leopold, Reuters I).

Meanwhile, Iran has not formally asked for an opportunity for its president to address the Security Council, a move reported earlier this week by an Iranian spokesman.

The spokesman said President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad wished to defend Iran’s nuclear ambitions in a speech to the council.

By yesterday, however, Iran had not requested a U.S. visa for Ahmadinejad to visit U.N. headquarters in New York, according to a State Department spokesman (Reuters II/New York Times, March 13).

Nor had an official request been received by the council from Iranian envoy Mohammad Javad Zarif, said council president Kumalo.

“For us it will only become an issue when we receive a letter from him and he (Zarif) had not yet received instructions to write a letter that I would then present to the other members for consideration of what to do,” Kumalo said (Reuters III, March 13).

In Iran, the nation’s top nuclear negotiator warned yesterday that Russia’s decision to delay fueling a nuclear power reactor at Bushehr would only strengthen Tehran’s resolve to develop its own uranium enrichment and fuel production capability.

Russian officials announced this week that that project would be placed on hold until a financial dispute could be resolved.  Russia has accused Iran of missing two monthly payments on the reactor project, a charge Iranian officials have dismissed as without merit, AP reported.

The Russian decision “shows that there is no such thing as a guarantee to deliver nuclear fuel,” negotiator Ali Larijani said yesterday.

Such promises are a key component of international efforts to persuade Iran to abandon its domestic uranium enrichment program (Ali Akbar Dareini, Associated Press II/Moscow Times, March 14).

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