Resolution jeopardises nuclear talks: Tehran

VIENNA (Reuters/AFP) - A UN nuclear watchdog resolution passed against Iran on Friday will jeopardise talks between Tehran and six world powers on its atomic programme and harm its cooperation with the agency, an Iranian official said.
The International Atomic Energy Agencys governing body approved the measures sponsored by the powers to censure Tehran for developing a uranium enrichment site in secret and they demanded it freeze the project immediately.
Adoption of this resolution is not only unhelpful in improving the current situation, but it will jeopardise the conducive environment vitally needed for success in the process of Geneva and Vienna negotiations expected to lead to a common understanding, Ambassador Ali Asghar Soltanieh said.
In a statement, he said the resolution was a hasty and undue step imposed by a small number of IAEA board members. This resolution will of course damage the existing environment of cooperation with the IAEA, Soltanieh later told reporters on the sidelines of the meeting.
He said Iran would end its voluntary gestures of cooperation to the IAEA, but did not specify details.
Of the 35-member board of governors of the IAEA, 25 countries voted in favour of the resolution, diplomats said.
The measure won blanket Western backing. Cuba, Malaysia and Venezuela, prominent in a developing nation bloc that includes Iran, voted no, while Afghanistan, Brazil, Egypt, Pakistan, South Africa and Turkey abstained. Azerbaijan missed the ballot.
Britain, France, Germany, the US, Russia and China had sponsored the new resolution against Iran over its nuclear drive, demanding that it halt construction of an uranium enrichment site kept secret until recently.
With rare Russian and Chinese backing, the vote sent a message of increasing international resolve to challenge Iran over its disputed nuclear ambitions.
But it was unclear whether the measure, sponsored by six world powers, would translate to crucial Russian-Chinese support for painful sanctions that Western leaders will push for early next year if Iran does not embark on steps to defuse mistrust. Iran denies seeking nuclear weapons, saying its atomic energy program is purely for peaceful purposes.
Developing nations argued in pre-vote debate that the resolution would be provocative and counterproductive. But supporters were provoked by the September revelation of a second enrichment site that Iran had been building for at least two years, a subterfuge they said fanned suspicions of more secret sites that could be dedicated to making atom bombs.
The vote signalled diminishing tolerance of Irans reluctance to embrace an IAEA-brokered plan to provide it with fuel for a nuclear medicine reactor if it parts with enriched uranium that could be turned into bomb material if further refined. The draft resolution urged Iran to immediately halt construction of the Fordow enrichment plant, located in a mountain bunker, and to clarify its purpose and confirm it has no more hidden atomic facilities or clandestine plans for any.
Iran has told the IAEA it developed the Fordow site in secret as a backup for other, known facilities in case they were bombed by Israel, which deems the Islamic Republics expanding nuclear program an existential threat.
The last IAEA board resolution slapped on Iran was in February 2006 when governors referred Tehrans dossier to the UN Security Council over its refusal to suspend enrichment and open up completely to IAEA inspections and investigations.