Major powers are pressing ahead with plans to impose UN sanctions on Iran over its uranium enrichment program even as the world body grapples with the reality of a newly nuclear North Korea, a senior US official said Tuesday.
Foreign Ministers from the five permanent UN Security Council members plus Germany decided at a meeting Friday in London to hit Iran with sanctions for ignoring UN demands that it suspend the enrichment activities.
But plans to draw up a sanctions resolution at the UN this week were overtaken by North Korea's announcement Monday that it had carried out its first nuclear test explosion.
The move unleashed a torrent of international condemnation and diplomats at the world body have since been scrambling to agree on punitive measures to draw the isolationist regime in Pyongyang back from the nuclear brink. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said that despite the dramatic developments in north-east Asia, parallel moves to draw up a sanctions resolution against Iran were still on track.
Senior diplomats from Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the United States will hold a videoconference call Wednesday to discuss an initial list of sanctions to use against Tehran, he said.
The discussions will then be taken up by the six countries' UN ambassadors, he said.
"I think they're going to have to be able to handle two serious issues at once here," McCormack said, brushing aside suggestions that the major powers were too preoccupied with the immediate threat from North Korea to tackle Iran's far less developed nuclear program.
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