U.N. Powers Fail to Reach Iran Sanctions Compromise

U.N. powers were unable to agree on a new sanctions resolution against Iran during talks yesterday, Agence France-Presse reported (see GSN, Dec. 20).

“We continue to have some tactical differences about the timing, but more than that, about how deep this (U.N.) resolution should go,” U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said after talks between political directors from China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States.

“I suspect that at some point this is going to have to go to ministers, as it always does.  But we think that there's enough continuous forward movement, that it’s good for the political officials to keep talking,” she said.

Rice stressed that despite the impasse yesterday, all of the countries have agreed on a basic international strategy on Iran that incorporates both punitive measures for Tehran’s uranium enrichment and offers of incentives for halting the program.

“We are all in agreement that the two-track strategy that we have been pursuing is the right strategy, because we need to convince Iran that it should stop its enrichment and reprocessing activities,” Rice said (Agence France-Presse/Google News, Dec. 20).

Meanwhile, former Iranian President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani attacked a Russian contractor today for stating that the Bushehr nuclear power plant under construction in Iran would not begin operating before late 2008, the Associated Press reported.

Russian news reports yesterday quoted Sergei Shmatko, construction chief for the Russian contractor Atomstroiexport, as saying the plant would not begin generating power until the end of next year.

The statements were “unprecedented because they create ambiguities,” Rafsanjani said without elaborating on either the ambiguities or Iran’s current understanding of the plant’s readiness to operate.

“Again they are saying just some words,” Rafsanjani said in an address at Tehran University, calling the contractor’s statement misleading.  “Years have passed from the time when they committed to start the plant's operation” (Nasser Karimi, Associated Press/International Herald Tribune, Dec. 21).

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