Iran urged to cooperate on nukes after UN sanctions vote

UNITED STATES: Major world powers welcomed UN sanctions imposed on Iran, urging Tehran to comply with international demands to freeze its controversial nuclear program.

After the UN Security Council unanimously approved the sanctions resolution, the United States and Israel called for even tougher measures, while Iran remained defiant, pledging to boost its disputed uranium enrichment program.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice welcomed the UN Security Council's unanimous approval of sanctions that target Iran's sensitive nuclear and ballistic missile programs.

"We call on all countries to take immediate action to implement their obligations under this resolution," Rice said in a statement.

The number-three diplomat at the State Department, Nicholas Burns, mapped out a broader diplomatic offensive that included individual countries setting financial and weapons limits.

Vitaly Churkin, the Russian UN ambassador, told reporters: "Russia has taken every chance in its contacts both with the Iranian side and its partners among the six powers and the Security Council so that the Iranian nuclear problem could be solved without resorting to sanctions. Unfortunately, we could not achieve that."

He called the sanctions, under Chapter VII of the UN Charter which requires all UN members to honour them, "the most extreme instrument in the international diplomacy's arsenal."

France urged Iran to "choose dialogue" over "increasing isolation."

"With the adoption of this resolution the Security Council has given Iran a clear choice: cooperate with the international community or pursue its enrichment and reprocessing activities at the risk of increasing isolation," French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy said in a statement.

"I call on the Iranian authorities to choose dialogue and to come back to the negotiating table," the minister said.

Britain's UN envoy Emyr Jones Parry, a resolution sponsor, said: "The choice is in Tehran. We set up the choice, we set up the legal requirement, and it's now for Iran to comply."

Through her spokesman, German Chancellor Angela Merkel called the sanctions "a significant step and a significant signal, since Iran has not followed through on its obligations and commitments to the international community".

Israel urged "further, swift and determined action" against the Islamic republic, the foreign ministry said.

"This is an initial step but besides the importance of imposing initial sanctions, the international community must call for further, swift and determined action in order to stop the process," the ministry said in a statement, adding that Israel assumed "the initial sanctions will not be sufficient."

Canada's foreign affairs minister, Peter MacKay, recalled that the package of incentives offered to Iran in June by the European Union High Representative on behalf of China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States "remains on the table and would constitute an excellent basis for a peaceful negotiated settlement."

Iranian political exiles in France said the sanctions were "the first necessary step toward preventing the ruling religious fascism in Iran from obtaining a nuclear bomb," the National Council of Resistance of Iran president-elect Maryam Rajavi said in a statement.

She called Tehran's nuclear program "completely against the interests of the Iranian people."

Washington, Sunday, AFP