Most nations at a key meeting of the UN atomic watchdog agency agreed on restricting Iran's access to technology that could be used to make nuclear weapons and set an indirect deadline for Tehran to meet their demands.
Despite the agreement, nonaligned nations -- including China -- opposed parts of the text of the resolution, and diplomats at the board of governors' conference of the International Atomic Energy Agency said they would submit amendments to three paragraphs yesterday, when the meeting resumes to vote on the resolution.
The 35-nation board has passed previous Iran resolutions by consensus. Still, with the majority of board members favoring the version agreed on by the EU, Canada, Australia and the US, the moves by the nonaligned nations and Pakistan had little chance of being approved.
The rift in the board appeared over the issue of uranium enrichment, a technology that can be used both to generate electricity and to make nuclear weapons.
Washington and Europe want Iran to freeze all enrichment and related activities, while the nonaligned group wants any such demand excised, saying all nations should have the right to it as long as it is used for peaceful purposes.
While the Americans assert Iran is trying to make nuclear weapons, Tehran insists its enrichment plans are meant only to generate power.
Even with the Western resolution likely to be accepted in full, it left open the possibility of a new confrontation with the US when the meeting reconvenes in November.
While demanding that Iran suspend all uranium enrichment activities, the resolution also recognizes the right of countries to the peaceful use of nuclear energy.
Iran says it is already honoring a pledge on what it considers to be a freeze in enrichment. Tehran's chief delegate, Hossein Mousavian, said that "decision-makers" might keep the present state of suspension in effect "for two or three months," until the November deadline set on Iran to meet the resolution demands, and perhaps even extend it so it encompasses some of the other conditions in the Western text.
Iran's present freeze only means it is not actually introducing uranium hexafluoride gas into centrifuges to spin the feed stock into enriched uranium, but the resolution calls for more: a halt to making, assembling and testing centrifuges and producing uranium hexafluoride.
Iran is not prohibited from enrichment under its obligations to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty but faces growing international pressure to suspend such activities as a good-faith gesture.
The text said the board will decide at the November meeting "whether or not further steps are required." Diplomats familiar with the draft defined that phrase as shorthand for possible referral to the UN Security Council if Iran defies the conditions set in the resolution.
By giving the Iranians room to maneuver on enrichment, the text appeared to fall far short of what the Americans had wanted. Washington had pushed to drop mention of countries' rights to peaceful nuclear technology and fought for an Oct. 31 deadline, with the understanding that if Iran failed to comply with the resolution's demands, the board would then automatically begin deliberations on Security Council referral.
In Washington, US State Department deputy spokesman Adam Ereli said on Friday: "We think that the text that we've worked at very diligently with our partners is a good text. It shows the spirit of compromise, and it keeps the pressure on Iran and sets up the November board meeting for important decisions."
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