Agreement on Proposal for New Iran Sanctions

The New York Times
By NICHOLAS KULISH

BERLIN — The foreign ministers of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council agreed Tuesday to a new set of sanctions against Iran to present to the Council as a draft resolution, but they did not announce details of the sanctions, which are intended to induce Tehran to give up its nuclear program.

The foreign ministers of China, France, Britain, Russia and the United States met here in the German capital at the invitation of Frank-Walter Steinmeier, the foreign minister of Germany. They discussed new ways to crack down on Iran for uranium enrichment, which Western governments have said could eventually be used in a restarted weapons program.

“We are agreed on the content of the next Security Council resolution,” Mr. Steinmeier said at a news conference after the two-hour meeting, without providing details. He was the only representative who spoke, and took no questions.

Without specifics on the proposed sanctions, it was unclear whether they would be much more extensive than previous sanctions or would be more of a symbolic gesture intended to demonstrate solidarity among the great powers. Russia and China, in particular, have resisted calls for harsher sanctions.

The proposed resolution will be submitted to the full Council within a few weeks, Mr. Steinmeier said.

The Council has twice voted to impose sanctions to stop Iran from enriching uranium, in December 2006 and March 2007. But the release last December of a declassified United States intelligence report saying that Iran had put its nuclear weapons program on hold in 2003 seemed to blunt the Bush administration’s argument that Iran presented a threat.

Iranian officials seized on the report, the American National Intelligence Estimate, the consensus of 16 intelligence agencies, as evidence that their nuclear ambitions were civilian, not military. Bush administration officials countered that Iran had deceived the world about a weapons program that could easily be restarted, and that Tehran was required to stop enriching uranium to comply with the Council resolutions.

“This is a swift reminder to the Iranians that they are not in compliance,” a senior American official said after the announcement. The official, speaking on condition of anonymity because the proposal had not yet been made to the full Council, said the United States was happy with the plan, which would “take some of the previous sanction measures and strengthen them” and add “new elements.”

The official specifically referred to the freezing of assets and travel bans, but said he could not elaborate because the foreign ministers were not releasing the text of the agreement until it could be shared with the 10 remaining, nonpermanent, members of the Council.

Despite the results of the intelligence estimate, the United States has been trying to keep the pressure on Iran. President Bush went to the Middle East this month to try to build a united Arab front against Iran.

Mohamed ElBaradei, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations’ nuclear monitor, met with Iranian officials this month for talks Dr. ElBaradei described as “frank and friendly.” Iran has defied international demands to stop enriching uranium.

A European diplomat described the proposal agreed to on Tuesday as “very technical” and said it “further developed the existing lines” of sanctions. He declined to be identified because the resolution’s details had not been officially released. The American official said that the “most active” in the debate were Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and the Russian foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov.

Ms. Rice did not speak after the meeting, but at a briefing earlier in the day she said, “I don’t think it’s any secret that we and the Russians and perhaps the Chinese don’t have precisely the same view of timing on these resolutions.”

She said the fundamental issue remained “Iran’s unwillingness to suspend its enrichment and reprocessing” of uranium.