WASHINGTON - Ahead of a crucial
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) meeting
in Vienna on Monday, a group of some 50 prominent
experts and former foreign-policy officials from
the United States and Europe have mooted a deal
with Iran on its controversial nuclear program.
If Iran agrees to a permanent and
verifiable end to its efforts to enrich uranium
and accounts fully for its past and present
nuclear program, both the US and the European
Union (EU) should provide significant benefits to
Tehran, according to a statement issued by the
group.
Washington, in particular, should
enter into a dialogue with the Iranian government
on issues of regional concern and "declare its
willingness to explore directly with Iran other
areas of concern", including moving toward the
normalization of diplomatic and economic ties, the
statement said.
If, on the other hand,
Iran rejects such a deal, the EU could join
the US in imposing economic
and diplomatic sanctions against Iran, even if
they were not authorized by the UN Security
Council, and "consider additional steps" should
Iran proceed with nuclear enrichment, withdraw
from the IAEA Additional Protocol or withdraw from
the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
"The credibility of Western
non-proliferation policy is now clearly on the
line," according to the statement, which was
released in Washington by the Brookings
Institution. "The European Union and the United
States have a strong common interest in bringing
Iran back to the negotiating table and persuading
it to change course.
"The best way to do
that is to make clear to Iran that it can win
significant political and economic benefits if it
foregoes a nuclear weapons program, but that it
will pay a very big political and economic price
if it does not. Such an effort will only work if
America and Europe stand united."
The
group, including top US national security
policymakers, Sandy Berger and Anthony Lake;
former defense secretary William Perry; and former
deputy secretary of state Strobe Talbott, as well
as former top Spanish and British foreign policy
officials, was formed last February to foster
trans-Atlantic unity on a range of issues that had
caused friction between Washington and Brussels
during US President George W Bush's first term.
It proposed a 13-point "Compact Between
the United States and Europe" as "a demonstration
that a comprehensive strategy can be forged to
deal with the full range of key challenges we
face".
Among other things, it called for
Europe to be more supportive of Washington's
efforts in Iraq, and for the US to commit itself
to negotiations over Tehran's nuclear program
being carried out with Iran by Germany, Britain
and France (EU-3).
While the Bush
administration has stuck to its first-term guns on
a number of issues, it has shown greater
flexibility on others and did, in fact, commit
itself - albeit grudgingly - to abide by the
results of any successful negotiation between the
EU-3 and Iran.
Those negotiations,
however, have run into what many observers -
including some who believe that Washington went
along with the EU-3 talks in the almost-certain
belief that they would fail - see as a dead-end.
Rejecting an offer by the EU-3 to provide
Iran with support for a civilian nuclear-energy
program, in exchange for its agreement not to
develop mastery over the nuclear-fuel cycle, the
new government of President Mahmud Ahmedinejad
last month removed IAEA seals at its nuclear
facility in Isfahan and restarted its uranium
conversion plant that could produce fuel for
nuclear weapons.
The Europeans had
repeatedly warned Tehran that such a move would
prompt them to support a US effort to refer
violations of the NPT allegedly committed by Iran
to the UN Security Council for possible economic
and diplomatic sanctions. The Vienna-based
agency's 35-member board is scheduled to take up
Iran's nuclear program on Monday.
Iran,
which has steadfastly denied it intends to produce
nuclear weapons and insisted that it has complied
fully with its NPT obligations, has warned against
any such move, suggesting even that such an action
may provoke it to withdraw from the NPT. It has,
however, offered to resume talks with the EU-3,
possibly within the context of a larger group of
nations, including perhaps Russia and China.
The latter two countries have already
indicated their opposition to sending the issue to
the Security Council, and some observers believe
one or both of them may ultimately be prepared to
veto any sanctions resolution. China has invested
heavily in Iran's oil and gas sector, while Tehran
is a major arms market for Russia, which has
helped build Iran's Bushehr nuclear plant.
Moreover, Iran retains considerable
sympathy among key developing countries on the
IAEA board, which normally acts by consensus.
India, Brazil, Malaysia and South Africa, among
others, point out that no concrete proof of the
existence of a weapons program has been
forthcoming and that important gaps in information
about Iran's nuclear program provided to the
agency by Tehran have since been adequately
explained.
In his maiden speech to the UN
General Assembly on Wednesday, Ahmedinejad
appealed for support. "The raison d'etre of the
United Nations is to promote global peace and
tranquility," he said. "Therefore, any license for
preemptive measures, which are essentially based
on gauging intentions, rather than objective facts
... is a blatant contradiction to the very
foundation of the United Nations and the letter
and the spirit of its charter."
For its
part, Washington has stepped up its own lobbying
efforts against Tehran, according to an account in
Wednesday's Wall Street Journal, dispatching
intelligence analysts to China and India last
week, for example, to brief them on Iran's alleged
efforts to develop a missile warhead, specifically
designed to carry a nuclear payload. The IAEA
secretariat has reportedly been given a similar
briefing.
Due to the lack of consensus on
the agency's board - as well as the uncertain
situation on the Security Council - many analysts
believe that the IAEA is unlikely to act on
Monday, and indeed US Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice seemed resigned to delay. "I am
not so concerned about exactly when it happens,"
Rice told Fox News, "because I don't think this
matter is so urgent that it has to come on
September 19."
But others see a sense of
urgency, even among Bush critics. Noting that an
Iranian nuclear weapons capability would be
"dangerous and destabilizing", the group said it
"could be a fatal blow to the NPT".
"Permitting Iran to develop enrichment and
reprocessing capabilities - even under an
international inspection regime - would leave [it]
one short step away from a nuclear weapons
capability - with which it could easily proceed,
once the fuel cycle was in hand, by withdrawing
from the NPT and asking inspectors to leave."
