Michael Richardson: Iran has friends in high places

The European Union and the United States face an increasingly difficult task in winning international support - especially from key states China and Russia - to report Iran to the United Nations Security Council over suspicions that it is developing nuclear weapons.

Underlying the disarray are conflicting interests between Western powers and countries like China and Russia that do not want to alienate Iran.

The issue will come to a head when the 35 states on the governing board of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN nuclear watchdog, hold an emergency meeting in Vienna this week. Beijing wants to prevent the destabilising spread of nuclear weapons and protect its generally good relations with the US and the EU.

But it also wants to nurture close ties with Iran, an energy supplier that is viewed as increasingly important in keeping the Chinese economy revving strongly.

Moreover, China - which champions multipolarity to offset dominant US power - sees Iran as an attractive partner, given its independence from the American sphere of influence and its proximity to the energy-rich Persian Gulf and central Asia, as well as its own wealth of oil and gas.

Iran is the world's fourth largest exporter of crude oil and has the second biggest gas reserves after Russia.

China is the second largest importer of oil after the US.

Supported by the US, the three EU nations - Britain, France and Germany - that have been trying to persuade Iran to abandon its plans to master the technology for enriching uranium, an avenue for making nuclear weapons, are consulting Beijing, Moscow and other key IAEA board members on a resolution to refer Iran to the Security Council.

This followed Tehran's removing IAEA seals from three nuclear research facilities, ending a two-year suspension of activities.

Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer says Canberra believes that reporting Iran to the Security Council would strengthen the IAEA's power to investigate Tehran's nuclear activities thoroughly. Most other board member-states, fed up with Iran's record of broken promises and its nuclear concealment over two decades, are also expected to vote for referral.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has said his Government's position is close to that of the EU. But China and Russia are reluctant to move quickly on any move that could lead to imposing sanctions. As permanent members of the Security Council - with the US, Britain and France - China and Russia have the power of veto.

Beijing and Moscow say more time is needed for discussion and that hasty action would provoke a hardline reaction from Iran.

Like China, Russia is keen to develop its extensive energy, military and commercial ties with Iran and is building Iran's first nuclear power plant at Bushehr.

The 1000-megawatt plant is expected to start generating electricity late this year and Moscow expects to get follow-on contracts.

Despite US objections, Russia agreed to sell advanced mobile surface-to-air missiles and other defence equipment to Iran.

Tehran insists that its nuclear programme is purely for peaceful purposes. But Mohamed ElBaradei, the IAEA head, has said that after three years of intensive investigation his agency is unable to confirm the peaceful nature of the Iranian nuclear programme.

He did not rule out the possibility of a secret nuclear-weapons programme and said he would not extend the March 6 deadline for his report on Iran to the IAEA board.

The best hope of defusing the crisis appears to be Russia's offer to form a joint venture with Iran to enrich uranium on Russian territory for use in Iranian reactors. Talks on this plan are not scheduled to resume until after the IAEA meeting. Although Iranian officials previously insisted that any enrichment should be done in Iran, the secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, Ali Larijani, said Tehran now has a positive view of the Russian proposal and would hold further talks.

China must be hoping Iran will accept the Russian plan, which has US and EU support. Acceptance would allay international concern over Tehran's nuclear ambitions and probably halt Iran from being referred to the Security Council by the IAEA for possible sanctions - unless persuasive evidence emerges of a clandestine Iranian scheme to make nuclear arms.

* Michael Richardson, a former Asia editor of the International Herald Tribune, is a senior research fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore.