France, Britain and Germany have met a key U.S. demand by proposing a November deadline for Iran to dispel concern that it has a covert atom bomb program, according to a draft resolution seen by Reuters. But the draft does not order Tehran to be automatically reported to the U.N. Security Council if it does not meet the deadline, as Washington wishes. Reuters was shown the draft, which will be revised before being formally submitted to the board of governors of the United Nations' International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
The draft says the board will "probably" consider whether further steps are needed after receiving IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei's next report on Iran in November. The United States had originally hoped that the IAEA board would report Iran next week to the U.N. Security Council, which has the power to impose sanctions, for violating the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) by concealing potentially weapons-related activities for nearly two decades. U.S. officials had been pushing the European Union's big three states to give up their strategy of trying to persuade Iran to abandon uranium enrichment and plutonium reprocessing, and get tough. |