The United States and Russia remain at odds over whether the
United Nations Security Council should move toward imposing
penalties on Iran over its nuclear activities, the New York
Times reported on Sunday.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Russian Foreign
Minister Sergey Lavrov spoke on Friday to try to close a crucial
difference over the language of a possible Security Council
statement on Iran.
The sticking point centers on the passage which says the
country's nuclear research is a "threat to international peace and
security."
"The Russians are worried that if you label Iran a threat to
international peace, it's the beginning of a process. If there is
going to be a solution, it will have to be negotiated by Lavrov and
Rice," the New York Times quoted an unidentified Western
diplomat as saying.
US government officials and European diplomats have emphasized
that any future sanctions against Tehran would be structured to
avoid strangling the Iranian economy as a whole and stirring
anti-western resentment among ordinary Iranians.
The Bush administration's concern is that suffering by Iranians
would delay the possibility of a more pro-Western government taking
power in Tehran, undercutting a planned US$85-million- program to
subsidize Iranian dissidents, promote exchange programs and sponsor
broadcasts to encourage pro-Western attitudes.
Despite the desire to win over Iranians, the US and its European
partners have prepared a series of escalating economic and
political penalties that could be ready for imposition on Iran by
the summer, US officials said.
Those penalties, they said, would start with imposing travel
bans or freezing foreign-held assets of Iranian officials, followed
by a ban on commercial dealings with any businesses connected to
Iran's military or to its nuclear programs.
More sweeping bans on commercial, business and energy relations
would be saved for later, various officials have said, adding that
if the Security Council did not authorize penalties, European
countries might act unilaterally after consultation with the United
States.
But a ban on military and nuclear energy dealing with Iran would
have immediate economic effects on Russia, which has contracted
with Iran to develop military defense systems and establish a
civilian nuclear reactor on the Persian Gulf coast city of
Bushehr.
European diplomats also say that the Russians have raised
objections to the American spending plan to encourage political
change inside Iran. The plan is widely seen as analogous to efforts
to bring about "regime change" in Iraq a few years ago.
(Xinhua News Agency March 27, 2006)
