Russia is ready to back a UN resolution to curb Iran's nuclear programme but sanctions drawn up by European leaders greatly exceed what Moscow agreed with Western powers, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Friday.
Negotiations on the draft resolution, authored by Britain, France and Germany with general US support, promise to be tough, possibly lasting weeks, because veto-wielding Russia and China oppose punitive action against Tehran.
Lavrov was speaking in Brussels as envoys of the six world powers prepared to meet at the United Nations later in the day to tackle differences over steps towards sanctions.
He said the six had agreed that measures against Iran should be "reasonable ... be proportional given the actual situation as regards the nuclear programme in Iran and should also be in stages".
"We were prepared and are still prepared to draw up measures of that sort," he told reporters after talks with Finnish Foreign Minister Erkki Tuomioja, representing the European Union presidency, and EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana.
"We do not intend to drop back our efforts as regards the problem of Iran and nuclear power," Lavrov said, but he added: "What the EU troika drew up went way beyond what was agreed."
Earlier, Lavrov's deputy, Sergei Kislyak, said Moscow, which is keen to protect major trade stakes in Iran, would not back the resolution without significant changes.
In Washington, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said she did not think Russia would block the UN resolution but conceded it might not be as tough as the United States would have liked.
"I think we will have a resolution that puts sanctions on Iran. It won't be as strong a resolution as if we had written it ourselves," Rice said in an interview with the Glenn Beck radio show. "But I think what you're seeing is some negotiation right now about what that resolution is going to say," she added.
On Wednesday, Lavrov said Russia rejected steps that would corner Iran, alluding to a travel ban in the draft on Iran's nuclear ambitions, which the West believes are a cover for bombmaking but Tehran says involve generating electricity only.
The draft orders all countries to prevent the sale and supply of equipment, technology and financing contributing to Iran's nuclear and ballistic missile programmes. It would freeze assets of people and entities involved in these programmes and prevent them from travelling except for special events.
"I would think we will get a resolution imposing some minor sanctions," said a Western diplomat at the United Nations, who asked not to be identified. "But that would require substantive concessions from both the Americans, who want tougher sanctions, and the Russians, who (really) want no sanctions at all."
Friday's meeting of the six powers will be the first in more than a week. All but Germany, a key negotiator, are permanent Security Council members with veto rights.
Russia's demands are expected to include softening the sanctions and redefining an exemption for a nuclear reactor Moscow is building for Iran, Security Council diplomats said.
The European-authored draft exempts from sanctions the $800 million Bushehr reactor in south-western Iran, expected to go into operation late next year. But the draft says Russia must check with a Security Council committee if it delivers material that can be used for weapons, such as parts used for the uranium enrichment cycle.
Russia has objected to including Bushehr in the resolution in the first place, saying it was a power plant that is legal under the 1970 nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Lavrov has said the resolution should focus only on areas the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN nuclear watchdog, has defined as serious, such as uranium enrichment, chemical processing and heavy-water reactors.
Iran's nuclear research programme has already purified nominal amounts of uranium to the low level needed to fuel power plants. Refined to a high level, uranium can set off the chain reaction at the heart of atomic bombs.
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