IRAN: Iran has a one-month "window of opportunity" to co-operate with the international community over its nuclear programme, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Mohamed ElBaradei said yesterday.
Agency board members are expected to adopt a resolution calling for Iran to be reported to the UN security council when they reconvene at the agency's headquarters in Vienna this morning after failing to reach a decision yesterday.
The majority of the 35-member board appear to favour adopting the resolution, with the exception of a handful of countries including Venezuela, Syria and Cuba. However, Dr ElBaradei said there was agreement that the security council should not impose sanctions or take any other action until he presents his report on Iran's nuclear programme to the board next month.
"We are reaching a critical phase, but this is not a crisis. It's about confidence-building and it is not about an imminent threat," he said, calling on Iran to increase its co-operation with the agency. "Hopefully Iran will go in to full suspension of its enrichment activities," he added.
Iran threatened the exact opposite yesterday when its ambassador to the IAEA, Ali Soltanieh, said that his country would begin "large scale enrichment" of uranium if reported to the security council.
Iran's chief nuclear negotiator, Ali Larijani, told Dr ElBaradei in a letter that Tehran would scale down its co-operation with the agency if reported.
"In such a case, the government of Iran . . . would have no other choice but to suspend all the voluntary measures and extra co-operation with the agency," he wrote.
"The agency's monitoring would be limited extensively and all the peaceful nuclear activities under voluntary suspension would be resumed without any restriction."
Western countries are concerned that Iran intends to use the enriched uranium for nuclear weapons. Iran says it has reactivated its programme to exercise its right to produce nuclear energy.
Earlier this week, the five permanent members of the security council introduced a draft resolution to the IAEA expressing "the absence of confidence that Iran's nuclear programme is exclusively for peaceful purposes".
Their concerns are based on Iran's "history of concealment" of nuclear activity and "many failures and breaches of obligations" under the nuclear nonproliferation treaty.
Russia and China granted their approval to the draft resolution after an amendment was made to delay further action until after Dr ElBaradei presented his report to the IAEA in March.
The resolution, and yesterday's emergency sitting, follow Iran's announcement last month that it had broken the agency's seals on its nuclear facilities, including one capable of uranium enrichment.
This move ended over two years of negotiations with the so-called E3 countries, Germany, France and Britain, during which time Tehran suspended its enrichment programme.
"Nobody on the board of governors denies Iran's right to nuclear power," said Dr ElBaradei yesterday. "However, now is not the time to enrich."
Russia has offered to enrich Iran's uranium and its IAEA ambassador, Grigory Berdennikov, said this offer meant "there was no rationale for enrichment in Iran".
EU German chief delegate Herbert Honsowitz reiterated the words of the E3 foreign ministers last month, telling the Vienna meeting: "The time now has come for the security council to get involved."
