US wants new Iran sanctions fast

WASHINGTON - AP- The United States wants quick action to punish Iran for refusing to roll back its disputed nuclear program and a new report by the U.N. nuclear watchdog strengthens the case for additional sanctions, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Friday.

The United Nations "has a very strong case" for passing a third Security Council resolution imposing sanctions on Iran after a new report from the U.N. atomic watchdog found that Tehran failed to cooperate fully with its investigators and left key questions about its nuclear past unanswered, Rice said.

"There is very good reason after this report to proceed to the third Security Council resolution," Rice told reporters at the State Department.

"This report demonstrates that whatever the Iranians may be doing to try to clean up some elements of the past, it is inadequate, given their current activities, given questions about their past activities and given what we all have to worry about, which is a future in which Iran could start to perfect the technologies that could lead to nuclear weapons," she said.

Rice spoke ahead of a meeting to discuss the new resolution that will be held in Washington on Monday between senior diplomats from the five permanent members of the Security Council and Germany, which have agreed on a draft.

Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns, the third-ranking U.S. diplomat, will represent the United States at the meeting. He said Friday that there is now "all the more reason now for the Security Council to pass a third sanctions resolution."

The U.S. wants the Security Council to begin debate next week. Burns would not predict how long debate would last, and would not rule out that the current package of proposed punishments could change. The proposed package slightly expands and strengthens previous penalties, but is weaker than the United States had wanted.

Burns is the top U.S. negotiator on a carrot-and-stick package proposed by the U.N. Security Council's five permanent states, which are all nuclear powers, plus Germany. Iran has rebuffed the offer, and has brushed off the Security Council's penalties.

Iran's sometime allies and trade partners Russia and China, which hold veto power at the Security Council, oppose very harsh measures. Burns said the new round of sanctions would pinch Iran, but he argued more strongly that failing to act would make the Security Council look weak.

The report Friday from the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency said that while Iran has answered some questions about it past practices, it has not suspended its uranium enrichment-related activities and instead expanded them and continued work on heavy water nuclear facilities.

When finished, Iran could cull them for plutonium, a possible fissile payload in nuclear warheads.

Those two findings alone empower the Security Council to slap additional sanctions on Tehran, something U.S officials say is imminent.

Iran says the U.S. and its allies provided false information saying Tehran's missile and explosives experiments were part of a nuclear weapons program, the International Atomic Energy Agency said Friday.

As expected, an IAEA report also confirmed that Iran continued to enrich uranium despite previous warnings and sanctions from the U.N. Security Council.

The U.N. body has demanded that Iran freeze the enrichment program, which can generate both nuclear fuel and the fissile core of warheads. Iran claims its program is peaceful and insists it has the same right to enrichment technology as nuclear nations such as the United States.

The 11-page report gave Iran a relatively clean bill of health on explaining the origin of traces of enriched uranium in a military facility; experiments with polonium, which can also be used in a weapons program; and purchases on the nuclear black market.

In such cases, "the agency has been able to conclude that answers provided by Iran ... are (either) consistent with its findings (or) ... not inconsistent with its findings," said the report, in careful language that would allow it to renew its investigation into the issues.

But it said Teheran had rejected as irrelevant some material forwarded by the agency that purportedly shows it working on tests of missile trajectories and high explosives, and research on a missile re-entry vehicle — activities that would most likely be part of weapons development. Questions also remained on how and why Iran came to possess diagrams showing how to mold uranium metal into warhead shape.