UN: The United Nations nuclear watchdog condemned Iran yesterday over an 18-year cover-up of sensitive atomic research and said any future breach of non-proliferation obligations would not be tolerated.
The UN International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) stopped short of reporting Iran to the Security Council, which could have imposed sanctions. However, some countries think Tehran has more secrets and will face the UN's supreme body one day.
The IAEA governing board adopted a resolution that "strongly deplores" Iran's cover-up over the past 18 years of a programme that involves uranium enrichment and plutonium reprocessing - both of which could be pointers to a nuclear arms programme.
The resolution, which passed after more than a week of tough negotiations between its sponsors (France, Germany and Britain) and Washington over how to balance encouragement and condemnation, also praises Iran's promises of "active co-operation and openness".
The US sees Iran as part of an international "axis of evil" and believes it has been using a secretive atomic energy programme to hide development of nuclear arms - an accusation that Tehran denies.
IAEA head Mr Mohamed ElBaradei told a news conference that he was pleased with the resolution, but added: "The board is sending a very serious and ominous message that failures in the future will not be tolerated and that the board will use all options available to it to deal with these failures."
Iran's foreign ministry hailed the resolution as an "achievement" for Tehran.
However, Iran's ambassador to the IAEA was disappointed the text left out the IAEA's conclusion in a recent report on Iran that there was "no evidence" of a weapons programme.
"The most important conclusion of the report... was not incorporated in the resolution," Mr Ali Akbar Salehi said.
The IAEA report, however, had also said the jury was still out on whether there was a nuclear arms programme.
Washington, which was infuriated by the IAEA's "no evidence" conclusion, saw the resolution as a clear rejection of Iran's nuclear cover-up and a US victory.
"Iran today is at a crossroads," the US ambassador to the IAEA, Mr Kenneth Brill, said in a statement. "They can... continue down the well-worn path of the past almost 20 years of denial, deception, deceit, or they can turn towards the path of a new chapter, wherein they really do come clean and meet their commitments in a verifiable way."
The US had hoped to send Iran to the Security Council for possible sanctions for "non-compliance" with its obligations under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). The Europeans opposed this and Washington finally acquiesced.
A senior US official, on condition of anonymity, said he saw the resolution as a "significant victory" for Washington. He said it served the purpose of giving Iran enough rope to hang itself in the future. "The Europeans are going to be embarrassed when the facts come to light... \ the Iranians haven't stopped their covert weapons programme," the official said, adding that the US and several other countries "know more than the IAEA".
British Foreign Secretary Mr Jack Straw welcomed the adoption of the resolution as "an important step forward in the international community's efforts to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons".