The European Union (EU) turned up the pressure on Iran Tuesday with a draft resolution reporting Teheran to the United Nations (UN) Security Council for violating its international atomic obligations, but diplomats said Russia was strongly opposed.

The draft asks the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) "to report to all members of the Agency and to the Security Council and General Assembly of the United Nations ... Iran's many failures and breaches of its obligations to comply with its NPT Safeguards Agreement."

The NPT is the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the benchmark arms control pact. The IAEA is required to report breaches of the NPT to the Security Council, which has the power to impose economic sanctions.

"It looks like the draft will be officially submitted to the IAEA board of governors on Wednesday," an EU diplomat said on the sidelines of the 35-nation IAEA board's weeklong meeting.

However, given Russia's opposition to the resolution, it was unclear whether the IAEA board would vote on it this week.

The EU draft, which will probably undergo revisions, makes no mention of sanctions.

It does, however, recommend that the Security Council urge Iran to allow the IAEA to inspect any sites it wants to visit, whether or not Iran is legally bound to do so. It also wants the Council to tell Iran to resume both talks with the EU and a freeze of sensitive nuclear work that Teheran ended last month.


Russian opposition

Despite broad Western support for the EU draft resolution, including the United States, Canada, Australia and Japan, diplomats said Moscow opposed any involvement of the Council.

At a dinner meeting of foreign ministers from the Group of Eight (G8) countries on Monday, the United States, Japan, Germany, France, Britain, Italy and Canada all tried to persuade Russia that Iran should be brought before the United Nations' highest body.

But Moscow was not convinced that taking the issue outside of the Vienna-based IAEA was necessary.

He was summarising a diplomatic cable from New York, where the dinner meeting took place on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly.

The diplomat said the other G8 countries would continue trying to persuade the Russians that it was necessary to report Iran to the UN's highest body for hiding its uranium enrichment programme for 18 years and failing to co-operate with the nearly three-year-old IAEA investigation.

Facing heated debate over its nuclear issue, Iran said it would review allowing short notice inspections of its nuclear facilities, if referred to the UN Security Council.

"If we are referred to the UN Security Council, we will review our stance on the additional protocol," Iran's chief nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani told reporters Tuesday
http://english.people.com.cn/200509/...21_209886.html


Is Russia a lawyer or an inspector to Iran?
Lately Iran has been in the spotlight of the international media. The Western countries, especially the United States, are getting increasingly annoyed over Iran's policy aimed at stepping up efforts for developing national nuclear program. Russia's stance on the issue should be taken into consideration for a better assessment of the situation and future developments. Over the last decade Russia has become a strategic partner of Iran. Russia can play a crucial role in resolving controversy over the Iranian nuclear program.

During the Cold War era, in Shah's time, Iran was rather leaning toward the West despite the announcement of its non-alignment foreign policy. The authorities feared, and with reason, for the spread of communist ideology among the poorest strata of the population. Following the Islamic revolution in 1979, the relations between Tehran and Moscow did not improve.

The relations began to change for the better at the end of the 1980s. There were two main reasons behind the changes. First, the Islamic world's indignation about the Soviet policy started to ebb after the Soviet troops pulled out from Afghanistan. Second, Iran's armed forces were in need of modernization after an 8-year war with Iraq.

Initially, cooperation between our country and Islamic Republic of Iran was military and technical. Later on cooperation expanded to fuel and energy complex, transport system, machine building, bilateral trade of consumer goods.

Cooperation survived all the ordeals of the 1990s. Following the collapse of the USSR, the Iranian regime of Islamic theocracy did not try to undermine Russia's authority by supporting Islamic fundamentalism in the former Soviet republics. Tehran has maintained a largely pro-Moscow stance on the conflict in Chechnya. On the other side, Russia quite succeeded in withstanding the pressure mounted by the West, especially by the U.S., despite the obvious weakness of the political system and economy due to painful reforms at first half of the 1990s. Cooperation between Russia and Iran kept running, it even became stronger.

However, it is worthy of note that the Americans successfully got the Kremlin to sign a secret agreement in June 1995. The agreement specified a particular range of weapons Russia would supply to Iran until the end of 1999. Russia eventually backed out of the cumbersome deal in 2000.

The differences in the opinion on Russia-Iran cooperation became clear-cut in Russia and the West following U.S.-led war on terror. U.S. administration announced that Iran was a part of the "axis of evil." Given the context of Russia-Iran relations, national interests of our country relate not only to the economy but to national security as well. At the end of the day, the case is also about Russia's standing at the international scene. Therefore it is very unlikely that our country is going to decrease cooperation even if the U.S. comes up with some attractive packages for the Russian economy.

Moreover, we had better bear in mind that Vladimir Putin has already showed his pragmatic attitude to politics. Let us assume that Iran would be one step away from the manufacturing a nuclear warhead that could be mounted on a missile already in place. Let us assume that the development would be accompanied by a sudden increase in aggressiveness of the Iranian foreign policy which might as well be part of a mischievous plot of the international terrorism.

Would Moscow play it cool and turn a blind eye on the Iranian nuclear program? The answer seems to be obvious.

In other words, cooperation between Russia and Iran will go on and become stronger in the foreseeable future. With its strong position in Iran, Russia will be able to play Iran's lawyer when the former deals with the international community. On the other hand, Moscow can also perform the duties of an unofficial inspector watching closely the developments in the Iranian nuclear program. Russia can do a better job than IAEA, EU, CIA, the Pentagon and the State Department collectively.
http://english.pravda.ru/world/20/91...6086_Iran.html

And once again here comes our dear allie Russia in defense of a would be threat.
Psycho4Bud Reviewed by Psycho4Bud on . EU ratchets up pressure on Iran; Russia opposes The European Union (EU) turned up the pressure on Iran Tuesday with a draft resolution reporting Teheran to the United Nations (UN) Security Council for violating its international atomic obligations, but diplomats said Russia was strongly opposed. The draft asks the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) "to report to all members of the Agency and to the Security Council and General Assembly of the United Nations ... Iran's many failures and breaches of its obligations to comply with Rating: 5