Europe joins U.S. in urging action on Iran

BERLIN – After Iran ignored warnings not to restart its uranium enrichment research, European leaders on Thursday declared an end to negotiations with the Islamic republic and called for hauling it before the U.N. Security Council.

The decision marked an escalation in the long-simmering crisis over whether Iran is secretly developing nuclear weapons, which would add instability to the Middle East.

The Security Council could impose punitive measures, including economic sanctions, although that’s unlikely immediately.

In Washington, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said she was confident the matter would go to the council, asserting that Iran “has chosen confrontation with the international community.”

“A very important threshold has been crossed,” she said.

She indicated the United States and its European allies would hold off on pushing for economic sanctions, which Security Council members Russia and China oppose because of their economic stakes in oil-rich Iran.

Instead, U.S. and Western diplomats said, the United States and Europe probably will ask the council to arm the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency, the global nuclear watchdog, with greater powers to investigate whether Iran is working on nuclear weapons.

The European decision to end more than two years of testy negotiations came two days after Iranian engineers broke IAEA seals on several facilities, including a key nuclear center at Natanz, in central Iran.

German Foreign Minister Franz-Walter Steinmeier said that he, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw and French Foreign Affairs Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy concluded during a meeting here that they had no choice but to halt the talks, which were to have resumed Jan. 18.

“We hope for a peaceful solution,” Steinmeier said. “But it appears the time has come for the Security Council to be informed.

“Our talks with Iran have reached a dead end,” he said.

Steinmeier said the ministers would ask the 35-member IAEA board of governors to convene an emergency meeting – expected sometime during the week of Jan. 23 – to approve a resolution referring the issue to the council.

A simple majority would be required, but the United States and the European Union are campaigning to assemble as many votes as possible, including those of Russia and China, which previously have opposed referring the issue to the Security Council.

Senior U.S. and European officials are to meet with Russian and Chinese diplomats next week in London, and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who has been critical of Iran, indicated Thursday that the Kremlin is shifting its position.

The Interfax news agency quoted Lavrov as saying that Iran’s action had made it “very difficult” for Moscow to continue opposing a referral to the Security Council.

Even before Iran unsealed its nuclear facilities, relations with Europe were in decline over recent remarks by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that Israel “should be wiped off the map” and denying that the Holocaust had taken place.

Douste-Blazy said he was disappointed that two and a half years of working to develop a trusting relationship had been tossed away, and he called for the international community to unite in condemning Iran’s actions.

Rice said the United States and Europe would consider not sending the issue to the Security Council if Iran refroze its uranium enrichment work and began cooperating fully with the IAEA.

“Clearly, if Iran wants to return to a course where it suspends these activities, stops threatening the world with its defiance, starts answering the questions of the IAEA … then I suppose that other courses are open,” she said at the State Department.

Rice said it wasn’t time to discuss “specific measures that might be taken once we’re in the Security Council.”