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US dismisses talk of compromise on Iran
(AP)
Updated: 2006-03-07 07:25
Unless Iran executes a dramatic about-face and suspends all its nuclear
activities, the U.N. Security Council will intervene "quite actively," a senior
US State Department official said Monday.
The message to Iran is that it has "crossed the international red line" and
engaged in unacceptable enrichment activity "and there must be a U.N. Security
Council process to deal with that," Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns said.
IAEA's Director
General Mohamed ElBaradei waits for the start of the International Atomic
Energy Agency's (IAEA) 35-nation board meeting on the escalating nuclear
standoff with Iran, on Monday, March 6, 2006, at Vienna's International
Center. [AP] | Burns did not say what the United
States would ask the Security Council to do. While the Bush administration takes
a stern line toward Tehran it might not be able to persuade other nations to
impose economic or other penalties on Iran.
The U.N. nuclear watchdog agency, which voted to refer the dispute to the
Security Council, will reaffirm its stance this week in Vienna, Austria, "unless
Iran does a dramatic about-face and suspends all of its nuclear activities,"
Burns said at the Heritage Foundation, a private research group.
His remarks followed a State Department spokesman's dismissal of reports an
eleventh-hour compromise might be struck over Iran's nuclear program.
Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency, said
at his agency's Vienna headquarters on Monday that the council might not have to
consider Iran's actions. Talks between Moscow and Tehran have focused on
shifting Iran's fuel enrichment activities to Russia.
The United States has long spearheaded a campaign to haul Iran before the
Security Council, which has the power to impose economic or other sanctions.
There was no hint of optimism at the State Department about the latest efforts
to defuse the issue, which ElBaradei said he hoped could produce a resolution in
a week.
"I am not aware of any specific proposals or any specific ideas that would
require or force any kind of delay in Security Council action," spokesman Tom
Casey said.
Casey also downplayed a new twist to the Russian proposal that diplomats
described to The Associated Press. Under it, the U.N. atomic watchdog agency
would set a level of small-scale uranium enrichment that Iran would be allowed
to conduct on its own soil as part of an attempt to keep Iran from using the
fuel for nuclear weapons, said the diplomats, who spoke on condition of
anonymity.
"You can't be just a little pregnant," Casey said of the
U.S. attitude toward small-scale uranium work by Iran.
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