Six powers’ meet on Iran inconclusive: Russia

Representatives of six major powers ended a meeting in New York Saturday to mull a response to Iran's nuclear defiance without reaching agreement, a Russian official said.

"We had a very sober assessment," Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov told reporters. "It is inconclusive in the sense that we did not make any decisions right away."

The closed-door working luncheon, which lasted a little over two hours, grouped the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council—Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States—plus Germany.

Diplomats said before the meeting the four Western powers were likely to present their Russian and Chinese colleagues with a range of new and tougher sanctions.

The goal is to crank up the pressure on Iran to accept a U.N.-brokered deal aimed at allaying suspicions about the nature of its nuclear program by shipping most of its low enriched uranium (LEU) stockpile abroad to be further enriched into reactor fuel.

But Tehran has ignored a U.S.-set Dec. 31 deadline to back the offer, drawn up by the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency, and countered with its own proposal of a simultaneous and staged swap of LEU with reactor fuel.

Specific sectors targeted

Measures said to be under consideration, include tougher sanctions targeting Iran's insurance, financial and arms sectors, diplomats said.

Washington favors sanctions targeting Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps, seen as the economic and military backbone of the Iranian regime in a bid to minimize the impact on the Iranian people and avoid an adverse effect on the very people protesting President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's hard-line regime.

"Our goal is to pressure the Iranian government, particularly the Revolutionary Guard elements, without contributing to the suffering of ordinary (Iranians) who deserve better than what they are currently receiving," Clinton said early this month.

Washington and its Western allies fear that Iran is secretly developing fissile material for nuclear weapons under the cover of its uranium enrichment program.

But Iran insists its nuclear program is peaceful and solely geared toward generating electricity for its civilian population.

Our goal is to pressure the Iranian government, particularly the Revolutionary Guard elements, without contributing to the suffering of ordinary Iranians who deserve better than what they are currently receiving

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton

China changes

The process of negotiating a new sanctions resolution will most likely take months, Western diplomats predicted.

U.S. and other Western officials have said privately that Russia is "on board" for a new round of sanctions, but several Western diplomats voiced skepticism the Russians would support tough measures against the Iranians.

Existing U.N. sanctions target Iran's nuclear and missile industries. The Western powers had originally hoped to sanction Iran's energy sector but they dropped the idea months ago when it became clear Russia and China would never accept it.

In order to secure Beijing's and Moscow's support, Western diplomats said they would probably be willing to accept a less ambitious resolution that adds a few new names of Iranian individuals and firms to a U.N. blacklist and focuses some attention on Iran's Revolutionary Guard corps.

They said Russia would probably back such a resolution, but it was not clear if they could get the backing of Beijing, a veto-wielding permanent Security Council member like Russia, the United States, Britain and France.

China and Russia, which have lucrative commercial ties with Tehran, supported all three previous rounds of U.N. sanctions but lobbied hard to dilute the measures before they were voted on by the 15-nation Security Council.