Russia, West agree on Iran resolution; IAEA chief to try visit Tehran

The U.N. nuclear agency’s most recent resolution on Iran criticizes Tehran’s nuclear defiance, but with language moderate enough to secure Russia’s and China’s support.

Diplomats characterize the document, obtained by The Associated Press, as a compromise. It will be put before the International Atomic Energy Agency’s 35-nation board over the next two days.

The U.S. and its allies had sought to deliver tougher demands for Iran to start cooperating with an International Atomic Energy Agency probe of allegations that Tehran is secretly working on nuclear arms. But Russia and China were opposed to any overtly harsh document.

The resolution expresses “serious concern” over Iran’s defiance of the U.N. Security Council and the IAEA’s board. Those two bodies want Tehran to stop activities that could be used to make nuclear arms and allow a probe of its alleged secret weapons work.

Meanwhile, the head of IAEA said Thursday he has proposed to Iran a “high-level” visit to Tehran to discuss the body’s damning new report on the country’s nuclear program.

“I wrote to Iran’s Vice-President and President of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, Dr Abbasi, on 2 November proposing to send a high-level team to Iran,” Yukiya Amano said.

Meanwhile, diplomats said on Thursday that the resolution being hammered out at the U.N. nuclear watchdog on Iran sets Tehran no deadline for responding to the body’s damning new report on its nuclear program.

Instead the resolution being worked out by world powers at the International Atomic Energy Agency calls on the watchdog’s head Yukiya Amano merely to update the board on progress in talks with the Iranians, a Western diplomat said on condition of anonymity.

Israel’s ambassador expressed disappointment, having hoped that last week’s hard-hitting IAEA report on Iran’s suspected nuclear weapons drive would produce a strong response from the agency’s board of governors.

“It could be tougher,” Israel’s envoy Ehud Azoulay told AFP on the sidelines of the two-day Vienna meeting that began on Thursday, commenting on a draft that he had seen.

“But this is the magic of diplomacy. If you want to get everyone on board you have to sacrifice something. I hope it will lay the ground for future (UNSC) resolutions ... I really hope so,” he said.

Speaking at the start of a two-day meeting of the IAEA’s board of governors expected to be dominated by the new report, Amano said he hoped the visit would “clarify the issues” in the Vienna-based agency's assessment.

“I hope a suitable date can be agreed soon,” he said, according to a text of his speech made available on the agency’s website.

“It is essential that any such mission should be well planned and that it should address the issues contained in my report,” he said.

“I ask Iran to engage substantively with the agency without delay and provide the requested clarifications regarding possible military dimensions to its nuclear program.”

He added: “I remain willing to engage in dialogue with Iran.”

Last week, the agency came the closest yet to accusing Iran outright of seeking to develop nuclear weapons, in a report immediately rejected by the Islamic republic as “baseless.”

Based on a mass of information from different sources, the IAEA said it was able to build an overall “credible” impression that Tehran “carried out activities relevant to the development of a nuclear explosive device.”

The evidence included a bus-sized steel container visible by satellite for explosives testing and weapons design work, including examining how to arm a Shahab-3 missile, capable of reaching Israel, with a nuclear warhead.

Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi said on Wednesday Tehran would send “an analytical letter with logical and rational responses” to the report.