Iran Warns West It May End Talks

As Western governments reaffirmed their will to report Iran and its nuclear program to the U.N. Security Council, Tehran lashed back Tuesday with a warning that such a move would mean “diplomacy is over.”

Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator, Ali Larijani, speaking on Iranian television, said his country would feel free to resume nuclear-related work and would rebuff U.N. inspections if the board of the U.N.’s International Atomic Energy Agency put the Iran case before the council.

Larijani made his statement even as news services carried a report of a confidential IAEA document that alleges a variety of Iranian violations of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. The allegations, contained in a report expected to be released at an IAEA board meeting this week, bolster suspicions that Iran has been seeking to acquire nuclear weapons. Iran says its nuclear program is solely for civilian energy purposes.

Among other things, the report says, Iran recently showed IAEA inspectors a 15-page document that details how to cast “enriched, natural and depleted uranium metal into hemispherical forms” for the manufacture of “nuclear weapons components,” according to an Associated Press report from Vienna.

The document, which Iran said it acquired unintentionally in a black-market transaction, has been put under IAEA seal, the report says. Iran informed the agency of the document’s existence last year but only recently allowed inspectors to view it.

The IAEA board of governors is expected to approve a resolution to report Iran to the Security Council at a special meeting Thursday and Friday.

The five permanent members of the council -- the United States, Britain, France, Russia and China -- announced early Tuesday that they had agreed that the board should send the council a detailed outline of Iran’s failure to comply with IAEA requirements.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told reporters Tuesday that the only debate among the permanent members was whether to report Iran immediately or wait until the March 6 meeting of the IAEA board.

Russia and China, which are trade partners with Iran, had hesitated to take action within the IAEA. They reached a compromise with the U.S. and European Union to make the report now but delay action on it until after March 6, Rice said.

The agreement to report Iran’s case to the Security Council constituted “the referral we have been seeking,” Rice said.

In his State of the Union Speech on Tuesday, President Bush urged unity: “The Iranian government is defying the world with its nuclear ambitions -- and the nations of the world must not permit the Iranian regime to gain nuclear weapons.”

A senior British official, briefing journalists on condition of anonymity, said he had no doubt that the IAEA board would follow the lead of the permanent council members. He added, however, that it was not clear whether the resolution would be adopted unanimously.

IAEA staff members were making “good progress” drafting the reporting resolution Tuesday, the official said.

“I think it demonstrates a substantial step forward in making clear to Iran the deep concerns that are felt, that suspicions about Iran’s intentions are widespread, and that it is going to take many years for Iran to rebuild confidence in its nuclear program,” he said.

Intensive efforts can be expected over the next month to persuade Iran to abandon its enrichment research and reseal the Natanz nuclear facility, which Iran reopened last month.

As early as today, senior Russian and Chinese officials were expected to arrive in Iran, the official said, “to make clear that even those world powers who are seen as most sympathetic to Iran share these concerns” about its nuclear program.

The official was dismissive of Iran’s reaction Tuesday, saying the nation’s position would be refined over time.

Among the offers still on the table is a Russian proposal to enrich uranium for Iran in Russia, where safeguards against enrichment to weapons-grade levels are more assured.

“We propose creating a network of nuclear cycle centers that would deal with uranium enrichment and granting all those willing to take part in joint activities equal access, nondiscriminatory access,” Russian President Vladimir V. Putin said in Moscow on Tuesday. “In particular, this concerns our Iranian partners. You know that the Russian Federation made this offer to Iran some time ago.”

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David Holley in Moscow contributed to this report.