EU urges Iran to halt nuke fuel work
Foreign Desk Report

VIENNA—The EU may hold off immediately calling for sanctions if Iran is brought before the UN Security Council for nuclear fuel work, giving Tehran one more chance to suspend activities which could be used to make atom bombs, diplomats said. The strategy was being worked out by European Union negotiators Britain, France and Germany ahead of a UN deadline Saturday for Iran to halt fuel work, they said Wednesday. Iran’s determination to proceed with work on nuclear fuel has scuttled talks on guaranteeing that Tehran is not secretly developing nuclear weapons, as the United States claims it is. The work, resumed in August after a voluntary hiatus of nearly nine months, has set off an international crisis that threatens almost two years of diplomacy by the so-called EU3 to give Iran trade and other benefits if it abandons sensitive fuel activities. Non-aligned states as well as Russia and China oppose a confrontation over Iran, preferring to try to resolve the crisis diplomatically, especially since the Iranians are doing only preliminary fuel work and not yet making the enriched uranium that can power civilian reactors or be the raw material for atom bombs. This has forced the United States and its European and other allies to proceed cautiously in order to rally support at both the Vienna-based UN watchdog International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the Security Council in New York, diplomats say. With Iran insisting on its right under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) to make nuclear fuel, the European trio is now ready to take a hard line when the IAEA meets in Vienna on September 19, they say.