7 Aug 2008
U.S. pushes for sanctions, Russia requests more time for Iran
Russia’s U.N. envoy Vitaly I. Churkin has requested more time for Iran to accept a “sweetened” package of incentives to halt their nuclear enrichment program.
The United States, France and Britain all asserted that Iran had missed its Saturday deadline, imposed by E.U. Foreign Secretary Javier Solana, and that further sanctions were inevitable.
Iran’s weekend response said that Tehran was ready to accept the incentives package as long as the six countries offering it (U.S., France, Britain, China, Russia, Germany) “simultaneously” presented more detailed explainations of the package.
“The letter that we received yesterday appears to be a stalling tactic,” State Department spokesman Gonzalo Gallegos said. He said the big powers are “beginning to consider the possible outlines of another resolution.”
Churkin’s explanation for the Russian plea for more time was fairly weakly worded:
“We haven’t set any deadlines for their response,” he said. “We have some negotiating opportunities, and rather than focus almost entirely on sanctions we should focus on what those opportunities should be.”
Afterall, he did admit that “we would have preferred a more straightforward and positive answer from our Iranian colleagues.”
What gets me is that he could have just said there was no U.N. deadline set, only an E.U. deadline and the entire negotiations to that point had been lead by the permanent members of the U.N. Security Council (plus Germany). Only three of the six members in that group are E.U. members, and only the U.N. technically has the authority to impose sactions.
Reminds me of the cover of the economist a couple of weeks ago “What a way to run the world. . .”