US, European allies press for UN action on Iran

BERLIN -- The foreign ministers of Germany, Britain, and France declared yesterday that more than two years of negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program have hit a ''dead end," and called for the matter to be brought before the United Nations Security Council for tougher action, setting the stage for a long-awaited international showdown.

In Washington, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, after conferring with the European foreign ministers in a conference call, said the Iranian regime had ''shattered the basis for negotiation" and ''chosen confrontation with the international community over cooperation and negotiation."

The announcements in Washington and Berlin were made two days after Iran resumed activity at its Natanz uranium enrichment plant, stoking fears that it plans to develop nuclear weapons. Iran, which insists it is pursuing only peaceful uses, agreed to suspend enrichment at Natanz in December 2003, eventually allowing UN inspectors to seal it shut as Europeans began negotiations with Iran to make the suspension permanent.

Iran's actions this week prompted Rice and her European counterparts to call for an emergency meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN nuclear watchdog. The meeting is expected to take place in the next two weeks. US and European officials must persuade a majority of the 35-member IAEA board of governors to refer the matter to the Security Council, which can impose punishments ranging from relatively mild diplomatic rebuffs to a major trade embargo or even military intervention.

The United States and its European allies must also reach a consensus among themselves and other key Security Council members -- most important Russia and China -- about what kind of action they should seek.

Yesterday, Rice said it was too early to tell whether the United States and its partners would push for economic sanctions against Iran, a major oil producer, as Vice President Dick Cheney appeared to suggest Wednesday.

Russia and China, which have been reluctant to punish Iran over its nuclear program in the past, both have veto power in the Security Council. But even Russia, which built a nuclear reactor in Iran, appeared to be running out of patience yesterday, calling upon the country to resume its moratorium on nuclear enrichment.

''In the absence of such a decision, we will find it difficult to continue our efforts" to dissuade Western countries from pushing for sanctions, said Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, according to the Interfax news agency.

In China, a major consumer of Iranian oil, Foreign Ministry spokesman Kong Quan called on all parties to ''exercise restraint" yesterday, but gave no indication of whether Beijing would favor tougher measures against Iran.

Rice did not close the door on resuming talks if Iran suspends its enrichment activities again, saying that she hoped Iran would see that it had ''miscalculated" the extent of international outrage.

But the United States was mounting a full-scale diplomatic initiative for tougher action.

Rice said Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Nicholas R. Burns will travel to Britain and Germany next week to coordinate strategy with European partners. Officials from Russia and China will also be present at Burns's meeting in London. Robert Joseph, undersecretary for Arms Control, will travel to Vienna for consultations with the IAEA.

''This particular phase, with a specific set of negotiations, has not succeeded, but we now enter a new phase in diplomacy," Rice told reporters.

The government in Tehran insisted that its nuclear program is intended only to develop fuel for a power plant and that it has the right to do so under international law.

Enriched uranium, however, can also be used to make nuclear weapons. In recent years, Iran raised suspicions after inspectors discovered that it had kept parts of its enrichment program secret. As a signatory to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, Iran is allowed to conduct nuclear enrichment for peaceful purposes, but must declare its activities and allow inspections.

Yesterday, European diplomats said the failure of negotiations were a blow to Europe's three largest powers, who have long hoped that economic incentives and the promise of better relations with the West would persuade Iran to abandon its nuclear enrichment program.

Calling for referral to the Security Council was, in essence, an adoption of a hard-line approach long favored by the United States.

Two years ago, US officials initially withheld support from the EU negotiations with Iran because Washington was skeptical that Tehran would ever agree to give up its sensitive nuclear programs. But when Rice became secretary of state, she backed the effort, arguing that if the talks failed, the Europeans would then support the US call for harsher action, as now appears to be happening.

Rice's backing allowed the Europeans to offer Iran a deal that would have set it on the path to becoming a member of the World Trade Organization, which the United States had previously blocked. That deal would also have given Tehran access to spare airplane parts.

But Iran rejected that deal and also rebuffed a different offer from Moscow to cooperate on nuclear activities but keep the enrichment of uranium in Russia.

In September, the IAEA board agreed that the Security Council had the right to look into Iran's secret activities, but gave no time frame for action.

Yesterday, the three European foreign ministers accused Iran of a ''documented record of concealment and deception."

''Our talks with Iran have reached a dead end," Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier of Germany said during a news conference after an emergency meeting with his French and British counterparts in Berlin.

Gholamreza Rahman-Fazli, a top Iranian official, told state television he was ''not worried," according to Reuters.

Iran's fundamentalist Islamic leaders have raised Western fears not only by snipping the seals at the nuclear facility, but also by calling in recent public remarks for Israel to be ''wiped off the map" and characterizing the Nazi Holocaust, in which 6 million Jews died, as a ''myth."

Some analysts believe that if Iran actually completes a plant capable of enriching enough uranium for a weapon, Israel will launch airstrikes to wipe it out, perhaps igniting a wide Middle East war. Israeli airstrikes destroyed Iraq's Osirak nuclear facility in a preemptive airstrike in 1981, but specialists say sensitive Iranian facilities are dispersed and hidden underground.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran, who came to power in the middle of the EU negotiations, said on Wednesday that his country will proceed apace with nuclear research regardless of world opinion. ''Unfortunately, a group of bullies allows itself to deprive nations of their legal and natural rights," he said.

Material from Associated Press was used in this report. Nickerson reported from Berlin. Stockman reported from Washington.