IAEA Iran resolution lacks deadline: diplomats

A resolution being hammered out at the UN nuclear watchdog on Iran sets Teheran no deadline for responding to the body’s damning new report on its nuclear programme.

A resolution being hammered out at the UN nuclear watchdog on Iran sets Teheran no deadline for responding to the body’s damning new report on its nuclear programme, diplomats said Thursday.

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.

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.’

But the report laid bare deep differences within the so-called P5+1 bloc dealing with the Iran question, the five permanent members of the UN Security Council — the United States, China, Russia, Britain, France — and Germany.

Washington, Paris and London jumped on the IAEA report as justification to tighten the screws on Iran, already under four rounds of Security Council sanctions, and additional US and European Union restrictions.

But Beijing, which relies heavily on Iranian oil imports, and Moscow, which also has close commercial ties and built Iran’s only nuclear power plant, have been far more cautious.