President Reagan and his wife(AFP/File/Mike Sargent)
Former President Reagan Dies (World News Service/Reuters)
This July 17, 1987 file photo shows former US president Ronald Reagan with former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher.(AFP/File/Mike Sargent)
photo of former U.S. President Ronald Reagan (C) and Vice President George Bush (R) showing the sights of New York city, including the statue of Liberty (background) to former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev on June 30, 1995.
EU "big 3" draft nuclear resolution on Iran-diplomats
Reuters
June 6th, 04
By Louis Charbonneau
VIENNA, June 6 (Reuters) - France, Britain and Germany are drafting a U.N. nuclear resolution on Iran that could set them on course for a confrontation with Tehran at an International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) board meeting next week, diplomats said.
The IAEA, the U.N. nuclear watchdog, issued a report last week praising Iran for granting U.N. inspectors access to sites, but said it has continued to change its story about imports of nuclear technology that could be used to develop atomic weapons.
"The three Europeans'...draft resolution is going to say that there are areas where Iran has been cooperating with the agency and areas where they haven't been cooperating," a Western diplomat on the IAEA's board of governors told Reuters.
"It will also tell them (the Iranians) to cooperate more," the diplomat said, adding that the point of the resolution will be to keep the inspection process going.
Iran, which says its nuclear programme is peaceful, wants to be off the IAEA board's agenda as a special item, but diplomats on the board said the resolution would likely keep Tehran on the agenda for some time.
Iran said on Sunday it had done everything necessary to clear up concerns about its nuclear programme, which the United States said could be used to make atomic bombs.
"Iran has answered all ambiguities on its nuclear activities and there is nothing left on the table," Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi told a weekly news conference.
The United Nations has been investigating Iran since an exiled Iranian opposition group reported in August 2002 that Tehran was hiding a massive uranium enrichment plant at Natanz and other sites from U.N. inspectors.
The IAEA's new Iran report and the draft resolution prepared by the European Union's "big three" will be the main topics of discussion at a meeting of the IAEA's 35-nation board that begins on June 14.
The Europeans have been working with Iran since last year to get them to end their uranium enrichment programme in exchange for peaceful nuclear technology. The Iranians agreed to suspend enrichment activities but, to the annoyance of the Europeans, have yet to fully suspend the programme.
The United States, which said the latest IAEA report contained further evidence that Iran is trying to cover up a nuclear weapons programme, will push the Europeans to include sharp language that describes the difficulties the IAEA had getting access to military sites in the Islamic republic.
Diplomats said Washington would likely delay until after the November presidential election any attempt to push the IAEA to report Iran to the U.N. Security Council for possible sanctions because of Tehran's two-decade cover-up of a uranium enrichment programme capable of making material for weapons.
Iran, which says its programme is devoted to the peaceful generation of electricity, said that the IAEA's outstanding questions were "minor" and has challenged the United States to come up with hard evidence that Tehran is working on an atom bomb.
IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei, the author of the report, said last week it would be premature to say now that it was clear Iran's programme was not peaceful in nature.
ElBaradei's report appeared to contain ammunition for hardliners who want to criticise Iran and those who would like to praise them to keep the IAEA inspection process going and avoid an international crisis if Iran pulled out of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
The report praised Iran for "providing access to locations in response to agency requests, including workshops situated at military sites".
But it also said inspections were "delayed in some cases" due to discussion of terms of access to defence industry sites.
Diplomats close to the IAEA said it took several months to reach an agreement with Tehran on the terms for inspecting a small group of military sites in Iran. One Western diplomat on the board said Iran may have wanted the delays to sanitise sites ahead of inspections.
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L06175915.htm