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West struggle to get UN consensus on Iran sanctions |
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(03/10/2010)
United Nations, PAB-Online
Western powers face an uphill battle in their bid to forge consensus in
the UN Security Council for new, tougher sanctions to force Iran to
scale back its nuclear ambitions, diplomats say.
Israel's UN Ambassador Gabriela Shalev said Tuesday that prospects were poor for adoption by the 15-member council of "crippling" punitive measures against Iran.
"The chances now seem grim regarding sanctions that will be crippling," Shalev told reporters here, in large part because veto-wielding council members Russia and China, appear reluctant to back a new round of tough sanctions proposed by Washington and its Western allies.
"The Chinese and the Russians still hope that diplomacy will work. They do not want to inflict any harm on the Iranian people," she added.
Adoption of a resolution requires at least nine votes from the council and no veto from its five permanent members: Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States.
Western proponents of sanctions say ideally they would like to get unanimous council support to show that the world is united in the nuclear standoff with Tehran.
As with previous resolutions, they fully expect to tone down their sanctions to make them more palatable to China, Russia and other council members concerned about the impact tough penalties might have on the Iranian people.
Diplomats here say a new sanctions resolution was still being negotiated in capitals by the six powers - the five permanent council members plus Germany - engaged in the nuclear bargaining with Tehran.
Shalev said that if the council was unable to agree on strong sanctions, then Israel "will look to the countries themselves" to slap additional bilateral sanctions. She was referring to the United States and members of the European Union.
On Monday, Israeli Vice Prime Minister Silvan Shalom said here that it was time for the Security Council to impose "crippling" sanctions on Iran, including some on 300 leaders of Iran's powerful Revolutionary Guards.
Israel considers Iran its biggest security threat because of comments by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad calling for the Jewish state to be wiped off the map.
Israel is widely reported to be the only nuclear-armed power in the Middle East, but it refuses to confirm or deny this, instead pursuing a policy of "nuclear ambiguity."
Shalev said the world was edging closer to "two bad options": Iran continuing to race towards nuclear weapons capacity, which "will put the whole world under the threat of nuclear war," or Tehran being stopped only "by force."
She said the second possibility was currently being discussed by senior US and Israeli political and military leaders, but declined to provide further details.
The Security Council has already slapped three rounds of sanctions on Iran over its refusal to halt uranium enrichment which Israel and the West view as a cover to build nuclear weapons.
Tehran denies the charge, saying the programme is for peaceful nuclear energy.
The United States, Britain, France and Germany have proposed a fourth set of financial sanctions targeting the Revolutionary Guards, but China has questioned the usefulness of sanctions at this time.
Russia has signaled it might be willing to back sanctions provided they only target Iran's nuclear proliferation activities.
Diplomats said Brazil, Turkey and Lebanon, three non-permanent members of the Council, also have misgivings about new sanctions and may abstain in a vote.
During a visit to Brazil last week, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was rebuffed when she sought Brasilia's support for sanctions, with President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva warning the world not to "push Iran into a corner."
And Tuesday, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan also signaled that Ankara might oppose new punitive measures, stressing that three earlier rounds of sanctions "have never yielded results."
Turkey, which has good ties with its neighbour Iran, has offered to host an exchange of Iran's low-enriched uranium for 20-per-cent-enriched uranium supplied by world powers to Tehran as part of a UN-drafted deal.
But Western governments are losing patience with Iran for rejecting the deal and for enriching uranium to higher levels. (AFp/IP)
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