evolution

Sometimes, peace is just a lot of work.

BERLIN, Oct 20 (Reuters) – The International Atomic Energy Agency will most likely not refer Iran to the U.N. Security Council when the U.N. agency’s board meets next month despite fears Tehran is seeking nuclear weapons, diplomats said. The 35-nation governing board of the IAEA, the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog, declared last month that Iran had violated the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) by hiding activities for 18 years that could be used to make atom bombs, paving the way for a Security Council referral and possible U.N. sanctions.

European and U.S. officials said at the time the IAEA board would refer Iran to the Security Council when it meets in November if Tehran continued to process uranium at a plant at Isfahan, which was mothballed until August under the Paris Agreement last year with France, Britain and Germany.

Tehran has so far refused to reinstate the suspension of sensitive nuclear work, which was the conerstone of the Paris Agreement, but the European Union’s three biggest powers have decided not to press for a Council referral at this time.

“The approach is not to refer Iran to the Security Council at the moment,” an official from one of the so-called EU3 countries told Reuters. “The idea is not to provoke Iran.”

You can almost hear the impotence in their voices — “the approach is,” “the idea is,” and from later in the article, these:

“At the moment we have the feeling that the report we will get (from the IAEA on Iran) in November will not be negative,” the diplomat said, adding that the intense international pressure on Iran might be beginning to yield positive results.

Another EU diplomat said Tehran appeared to be working hard to avoid a Council referral and warned that being too confrontational with Iran could be counterproductive.

“If it’s significant cooperation, then I would imagine people would want to think very carefully about whether to do anything that would upset that cooperation,” he said.

“If the cooperation is clearly not significant, then we’ll have to reconsider,” the diplomat said, adding that the threat of a Council referral was “driving them to recognise the need to be more cooperative.”

Weak, toothless, ineffective, impotent. This organization clearly can’t stop Iran from building nuclear weapons. Iran knows it, and the mullahs must be checking the wires this morning and laughing, knowing they’ve jerked around the Euroweenies yet again.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 20th, 2005 at 10:52 and is filed under devolution, national security. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.