UN: Britain, France and Germany have introduced a draft UN Security Council resolution demanding that Iran stop enriching or reprocessing uranium by next month or face unspecified sanctions.
The US-backed resolution, introduced on Thursday night, calls on states to prevent trade in ballistic missiles and nuclear technology to Iran. It also would require Iran to submit to more intrusive UN inspections than are required by the 1970 Non-Proliferation Treaty.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN nuclear watchdog, would be instructed to report on Iran's compliance with the resolution sometime next month.
The move comes a week after the council's five veto-wielding members - the US, Russia, China, France, Britain - and Germany admonished Iran for failing to suspend its uranium enrichment programme or respond to incentives offered by global powers.
They unanimously agreed in Paris on July 12th to weigh Security Council sanctions against Iran if it failed to comply with their demands.
But Russia has sought to soften the resolution introduced on Thursday by calling for the elimination of crucial language that would require Iran to cease its enrichment and reprocessing of nuclear fuel. Instead, Russia proposes that the council simply call upon Iran to do so.
Russia also has introduced amendments that would slow down the path to sanctions and rule out the possibility that the resolution could be used as a pretext to authorise military action.
"We are not in a rush at all," Russian ambassador Vitaly Churkin told reporters after a meeting on Wednesday with the US, Britain, France and China. "We are giving some freedom to Iran to respond. We do not want to dictate things to Iran."
The US and its European allies believe that Iran has been trying secretly to build nuclear weapons for more than 18 years.
Iran maintains that it is simply seeking to master the nuclear enrichment process to ensure that it has a secure supply of fuel to run its nuclear energy program.
The International Atomic Energy Agency maintains that Iran has added to international suspicions by misleading the world about its nuclear activities. Although the IAEA has not established that Iran is developing nuclear weapons, it complains that Iran's unwillingness to provide it with full co-operation has made it impossible to conclude that its nuclear programme is for peaceful purposes.
The major powers offered in June to provide Iran with a series of trade incentives, including support for its integration into the World Trade Organisation, in exchange for suspending its nuclear activities.
They also pledged to provide legally binding guarantees to supply Iran with enough nuclear fuel to operate its power plants.
Meanwhile, the Bush administration agreed to participate directly in the talks, and to consider lifting long-standing sanctions on the sale of commercial jets, agricultural equipment and telecommunications technology to Iran.
But the US decision to engage Iran was conditioned on a commitment by its diplomatic partners to support sanctions if Iran continued to defy the wishes of the United Nations.
Iran's chief nuclear negotiator, Ali Larijani, issued a statement on Thursday saying Iran wanted to continue negotiations to resolve the nuclear standoff, but would not formally respond to the package of incentives until August 22nd.
John Bolton, the US ambassador to the United Nations, suggested that the diplomatic standoff would delay the adoption of the resolution beyond this week.
"We'll see if the United States can play a bridging role between the European Union and the Russians, and see if we can't help resolve this and get a resolution that's satisfactory to all of us," he said.