Russia declares Iran resolution the 'first step to war'

LONDON - Russia was last night seeking the removal of the core of a draft UN resolution on Iran which it says evokes memories of pre-emptive military strikes in Yugoslavia and Iraq.

The Russian Ambassador to Britain said Russia feared it could pave the way to unilateral military action to halt a suspected Iranian nuclear weapons programme.

Yury Fedotov said that Russia was opposed to the Chapter VII reference because it evoked memories of past UN resolutions on Yugoslavia and Iraq that had eventually led to US-led military action that had not been authorised by the Security Council.

Russia's partners in the Security Council had argued in the past that the reference was needed to obtain "robust language", he said. But "afterwards it was used to justify unilateral action. In the case of Yugoslavia, for example, we were told at the beginning that references to Chapter VII were necessary to send political signals, and it ended up with Nato bombardments."

A bruising battle now looms in New York at a dinner of foreign ministers of the five UN Security Council veto-holding members, plus Germany, over UN plans to compel Iran to abandon uranium enrichment. The talks could result in an embarrassing climbdown for Britain.

British and US officials have said that the core of the draft text is the fact that it is placed under Chapter VII of the UN charter, which provides for possible sanctions and military enforcement.

The US Ambassador to the UN, John Bolton, said last week when Britain, France and the US tabled the draft that "the fundamental point is for Russia and China to agree that this is a threat to international peace and security under Chapter VII".

However, faced with heated Russian and Chinese objections to the Chapter VII provision in negotiations at ambassador level, by the weekend Bolton was saying that he had asked the two countries to come up with another way of making the resolution's demands mandatory.

Meanwhile, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is to send letter to US President George W. Bush proposing new ways to resolve "the current vulnerable situation in the world". Reports say it is the first letter from an Iranian president to a US leader since the Iranian revolution in 1979.

- INDEPENDENT, REUTERS