Excerpts from previous status reports, by subject
Removed on December 2, 2005
The IAEA finds Iran in non-compliance but delays U.N.
Security Council referral
On September
24, 2005, a majority of the International Atomic Energy Agency's governing
board voted that Iran had broken
its nuclear
obligations and should be sent to the U.N.
Security Council—without, however, specifying a date. The
vote was a victory for Britain, France and Germany—who
drafted the resolution—and for the United States, which has long
argued that Iran’s nuclear violations should be taken up by
the Security Council. Only Venezuela opposed the resolution, while
Russia,
China, Pakistan, South Africa and Brazil abstained.
Iran’s response to the vote was swift. Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki called the resolution “political, illegal and illogical,” and threatened punitive measures against Britain, France and Germany. Iran also threatened Japan and India, countries that supported the resolution despite their reliance on Iran for energy, and reportedly imposed an unofficial embargo on imports from South Korea, the Czech Republic and Britain. And in a statement broadcast on state-run television, Iran warned that it would resume uranium enrichment and limit its cooperation with IAEA inspectors unless its Security Council referral is scrapped.
Despite
the divided vote, which is unusual for an Agency that normally operates
by consensus, all governing board members have agreed that
Iran should resume its freeze on uranium processing. In an earlier
resolution, adopted unanimously on August 9, the board called on Iran
to reinstate its nuclear freeze and to resume talks with Britain, France
and Germany, its negotiating partners. The talks broke down in early
August, after Iran rejected Europe’s package of economic, security
and energy incentives, and restarted uranium conversion work. This
work was a clear violation of the November 2004 deal Iran struck with
Europe, in which Tehran promised to suspend “all enrichment related
and reprocessing activities,” including “all tests or production
at any uranium conversion installation.”