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Iran Lambasts UN after Nuclear Sanctions | ASHARQ AL-AWSAT English Archive 2005 -2017
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TEHRAN (AFP) – Iran on Tuesday slammed the UN Security Council’s move to tighten sanctions over its contested nuclear programme, accusing the world body of being manipulated by the West and undermining the UN atomic agency.

The Security Council on Monday imposed its third set of sanctions against Iran in the space of 15 months to punish Tehran’s refusal to suspend uranium enrichment, which world powers fear Iran could use to make nuclear weapons.

“We are once again witnessing the bitter reality that the Security Council’s position is belittled to an extent to serve as an instrument at the service of the foreign policy of a few countries,” said Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations Mohammad Khazaie.

The resolution is “totally illegitimate and illegal,” he told the meeting, according to the official IRNA news agency.

Fourteen of the council’s 15 members voted in favour of Resolution 1803 put forward by Britain and France, who delayed the vote in a bid to win unanimity to send a strong signal to Tehran.

Indonesia abstained, but Libya, South Africa and Vietnam, which joined Indonesia in expressing reservations about the need for fresh sanctions, finally voted in favour.

Iranian officials said that its ongoing cooperation with the UN nuclear watchdog to answer questions about past areas of ambiguity in its atomic programme meant that any new sanctions were wholly unjustified.

“The new resolution strengthening sanctions against Tehran results in a weakening of the the IAEA,” the ISNA news agency quoted Iran’s ambassador to the watchdog Ali Asghar Soltanieh as saying.

“The objective of the false position of the West in the Security Council is to damage the agency and its professional efforts,” Soltanieh said.

Iranian officials have queued up to hail the International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) latest report as a success for Tehran, even though the body was unable to confirm that the nuclear drive was peaceful.

Intelligence shown to the IAEA board last week also alleged that Tehran was involved in military research that pointed to the development of non-conventional weapons.

The information suggested Iran continued nuclear weapons work beyond the 2003 date cited in a recent US intelligence report. But Tehran, which insists its nuclear drive was and is peaceful, dismissed the documents as fakes.

“I urge Iran to be as active and as cooperative as possible in working with the agency to clarify this matter of serious concern,” IAEA chief Mohammad ElBaradei told the IAEA’s 35-member board of governors in Vienna.

After the UN vote, the six world powers issued a statement calling for new talks between EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana and Iran’s top nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili to break the deadlock.

So far talks between the pair have failed to make any headway and Solana said bluntly after an encounter in November that he was “disappointed”.

The head of parliament’s foreign policy commission Alaeddin Boroujerdi meanwhile warned that talks with the European Union could have been endangered by the new resolution.

“Iran’s supreme national security council should react with a new decision with regard to the mechanism of negotiations and the continuation of interaction with Europe,” he said.

The resolution gives Iran three months to comply with UN and IAEA demands to suspend uranium enrichment, a process that can be used to make nuclear fuel and atomic weapons.

It includes an outright ban on travel by officials involved in Tehran’s nuclear and missile programmes, and broadens a list of individuals and entities subject to an assets freeze.

It calls for inspections of shipments to and from Iran if there are suspicions of prohibited goods and urges states to “exercise vigilance” in entering into new commitments for public-provided financial support for trade with Iran, including the granting of export credits.

Despite the new resolution, there appears little chance Iran’s leaders will budge from their position of refusing to suspend uranium enrichment.

“If they (the UN Security Council) think that they can apply pressure, it does not matter how many resolutions they issue,” President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said in an interview with state television last week.