As IAEA Debates, Iran Warns It May Refuse Russia

Iran warned Friday that if the International Atomic Energy Agency votes to report its nuclear program to the United Nations Security Council, Tehran will rebuff a proposed Russian compromise and start enriching large quantities of uranium on its own soil.

The comments were made as 35 member nations of the IAEA board of governors deliberated for a second day a resolution to report Iran to the council.

Russia’s ambassador to the agency, which is the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog, insisted that the compromise was still under discussion despite assertions from a top Iranian official, who told reporters here that the resolution, composed by the European Union and backed by China, Russia and the United States, would be a “historical mistake.”

In his remarks, Javad Vaeidi, deputy director of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, also said that approval of the resolution would put an end to diplomacy and the Russian proposal.

The Russians have proposed establishing a joint venture with Iran in which uranium gas produced in Iran would be shipped to Russia, where it would be purified into enriched uranium suitable for use in nuclear power plants.

Iran has said it wants to enrich uranium only to generate electrical power.

European and U.S. diplomats have indicated that they would approve of such an arrangement to prevent Iran from acquiring the ability to enrich uranium itself.

Once scientists master the nuclear fuel cycle, it is relatively easy to go from enriching uranium for civilian use to enriching it to the degree needed to make fissile material for a bomb.

Western diplomats were unmoved by Iran’s latest threat.

“We are convinced that we have a solid majority in support of a resolution that reports Iran to the Security Council, and that majority has grown,” said Gregory Schulte, the U.S. ambassador to the IAEA.

The resolution’s backers, hoping for as many as 30 votes, said they had agreed to minor wording changes but that the core points remained intact. They are trying to ease worries among countries such as Algeria and Indonesia that they too might be censured for their efforts to develop nuclear power.

However, the backers are resisting a push by Arab countries -- led by Egypt, a member of the IAEA board -- to include language specifying that the Middle East should be a nuclear-free zone, said Western diplomats, who asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the issue.

Such language would be aimed at both Iran and Israel, which is widely believed to already have nuclear weapons. However, the United States and Western allies have never strenuously objected to Israel’s atomic program, in contrast to their stern stand against other Middle East countries’ nuclear aspirations.

Despite those issues, Western diplomats said there was no doubt that the resolution would be approved, making Iran the fifth country the IAEA has sent to the Security Council for censure in recent years.

Two of the other countries, Libya and Romania, disclosed and dismantled their atomic programs and were referred to the council more as a formality than for censure, IAEA sources said.

The two other countries are North Korea, which has been referred twice, and Iraq.

U.S. diplomats said they had no immediate plans to seek sanctions against Iran, but they made it clear that they would not hesitate to do so later.

“Once this is on the agenda of the Security Council, we foresee a graduated approach to bringing additional pressure on the leadership in Tehran to achieve a negotiated settlement,” Schulte said.

“The collective goal in Vienna is to encourage the leadership in Tehran to take those steps that will allow them to start regaining the confidence of the international community,” he said.

The last IAEA resolution on Iran, approved by the board in September, won by only a narrow margin, putting Western countries on the defensive and diluting the move’s impact. In that case, Iran was found in noncompliance with its obligations under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, which requires, among other things, that Iran disclose its atomic activities.

This time, Western diplomats said, they want to get substantially more votes.

“I think there’s a desire to dispel the impression at the last board meeting of division and frustration,” one diplomat said.

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Times staff writer John Daniszewski in London contributed to this report.