AUSTRIA: Iran warns against Security Council resolution over its nuclear program, says U.S. has "hidden agenda"

Iranian ambassador to IAEA says any Security Council resolution against it would have a negative effect on nuclear negotiations. Iran on Friday (November 23) accused the United States of having a 'hidden agenda and misusing the IAEA' to pursue harsher U.N. sanctions against it, and said a Security Council resolution would have a negative impact on Iran's cooperation with the IAEA. "Any gesture, resolution in United Nations Security Council would have negative impact on our collaboration and full cooperation with the agency which we have done beyond our legal obligation in accordance with the work plan," Iranian Amabassador Ali Asghar Soltanieh told reporters after a two day meeting of the Agency's Board of Governors ended in Vienna. The warning came a day after the U.N. nuclear watchdog chief said Iran was making good progress towards resolving questions by the end of the year, only for Western powers to say Tehran had not done enough to win trust in its atomic ambitions and the United Nations should now consider biting sanctions. Soltanieh said its explanations since August of undeclared efforts to acquire centrifuge enrichment technology in the 1980s and '90s meant the most important issues related to Iran's past activities had been concluded. "U.S. has hidden agenda, U.S. is misusing this technical forum, the IAEA. What U.S. is looking for is increasing the involvment of the United Nations Security Council, increase unilateral sanctions, instrumental use of the United Nations Security Council, and undermine and further weaken the authority of the Agency (IAEA)," he told reporters. However, IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei told the 35-nation gathering on Thursday (November 22) Iran remained some way from establishing confidence in its nuclear aspirations. Iran's clarifications on centrifuge research were consistent with IAEA intelligence but had yet to be checked for completeness so the issue was not yet resolved, he said. Moreover, he said the IAEA remained in the dark about the scope of Iran's current activity as it was blocking wide-ranging snap inspections to verify the absence of parallel, covert activity devoted to bomb-oriented enrichment. "A wait-and-see approach is not an option," EU-3 powers Britain, France and Germany told IAEA governors on Thursday. They and the United States said Iran had failed a litmus test to show full disclosure and suspend enrichment by mid-November to gain a reprieve from further sanctions. Iranian nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili and EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana will reconvene talks on Nov. 30. If Solana concludes, as widely expected, that Iran remains adamant against suspending nuclear fuel production, Western powers say this will trigger drafting of broader sanctions by a six-nation group including Russia and China. But Moscow and Beijing interpreted Iran's cooperation more positively in remarks to the IAEA board, with Moscow calling it "constructive", and neither mentioned the idea of intensifying U.N. penalties, diplomats in the meeting said. sk/ss/jrc

ITN Source | November 24, 2007