Six world powers aim to put pressure on Iran with a resolution at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that would censure Tehran over its new nuclear site and would involve the UN Security Council, diplomats said Tuesday, according to dpa The IAEA"s governing board is set to start a meeting on Thursday in which the Fordu enrichment facility will be discussed, a site that Tehran revealed to the Vienna-based agency only in September, several years after starting construction. Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the United States drafted a resolution that "notes with serious concern" that Iran is constructing this facility, a Western diplomat said. The resolution also tasks outgoing IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei with transmitting the document to the UN Security Council. Another diplomat said the resolution would be a way of starting to build pressure on the Islamic Republic before the Security Council would take up the issue again early next year and mull further sanctions if Iran does not start cooperating. "It"s a political signal to say: We waited for a long time, but our patience has run out," he said. The board last issued a resolution on Iran in 2006. The document said Iran was building the facility in breach of Security Council resolutions calling for a halt of the enrichment programme, according to the Western diplomat. The draft text also echoes ElBaradei"s latest report on Iran, in which he said the belated revelation about the new Fordu enrichment plant near the city of Qom reduces the IAEA"s confidence that there are other still hidden nuclear sites. Several diplomats said however that it was not yet certain whether the draft would get support from a majority of the 35 countries on the IAEA board. In the past, developing countries have resisted attempts to censure Iran or to involve the Security Council. Iranian officials have said that the Fordu site, which is to start operating in 2011, was built for backup, in case the larger enrichment plant in Natanz were destroyed by Israel. Iran"s Revolutionary Guards on Sunday began military manoeuvres to test air force capabilities against attacks on nuclear sites. In the West, news about the Fordu plant have rekindled suspicions that Tehran really wants to enrich uranium not to fuel reactors, but to make material for nuclear weapons. The six countries are not only waiting for Tehran to fully open its nuclear programme to IAEA inspectors and to halt enrichment, but also to agree to a proposed multinational nuclear fuel deal that would build confidence in Iran"s peaceful nuclear intentions. The Tehran Foreign Ministry on Thursday said that Iran has not rejected the deal to exchange its uranium stock for foreign-made reactor fuel, but that it first wants guarantees that it would be fully implemented. The comments by ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast stood in contrast to last week"s remarks by Foreign Minister Manochehr Mottaki, who had apparently rejected the deal drafted by ElBaradei.
