The six major powers confronting Iran over its nuclear programme failed Wednesday to agree on sanctions to impose on Tehran and sent the dossier to their ambassadors at the United Nations for further talks, senior US officials said.
Senior diplomats from the six - Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the United States - discussed the sanctions during a videoconference Wednesday morning, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack told AFP.
"I think there is broad agreement on the potential sanctions that would be included, but not yet agreement on the specific items that would be in a resolution, that has to be worked out," he said.
The six have been debating for weeks over the kinds of sanctions to slap on Iran for ignoring an August 31 UN deadline for suspending a uranium enrichment programme that Washington and others fear will be subverted to produce fissile material for nuclear weapons.
But China and Russia, which both wield veto power on the Security Council, have balked at imposing the kind of punitive measures sought by Washington, with the backing of Britain.
Under-secretary of State Nicholas Burns, who has led the negotiations for the United States, said the process could still drag on for days, delayed in part by more urgent consultations about sanctions to impose on North Korea after it announced that it carried out its first test of the nuclear bomb on Monday. "It's a busy schedule at the Security Council this week," Burns acknowledged in an address to the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.
He admitted that discussions of sanctions against Iran that Washington had hoped to bring to the UN at the beginning of this week might not get underway until early next week.
Iran says its enrichment programme is designed only to provide fuel for nuclear power stations and as such is allowed under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
The five permanent Security Council members plus Germany drew up in June a list of 15 possible punitive measures against Iran as part of a "carrots and sticks" package that also included economic and political rewards if Tehran agreed to suspend uranium enrichment.
The plan, which was never officially released but was leaked to the press, called for a graduated series of measures, firstly targeting Iran's military programmes and later, if these fail, moving to broader political and economic sanctions. McCormack confirmed that list being sent to the UN ambassadors was a "subset" of the sanctions included in the earlier document.
The broader list included an embargo on the export of goods and technologies linked to Iran's nuclear and ballistic missile programmes, a freeze on assets related to the programmes and travel bans on nuclear and weapons scientists.
Tougher measures would prohibit financial transactions by individuals or organisations involved in the arms programmes and a ban on investment in entities engaged in the programmes. Washington has been arguing in favour of imposing sanctions since Iran ignored the August 31 deadline.
But under strong pressure from China and Russia, which both have important economic ties to Iran and traditionally oppose sanctions as a diplomatic weapon, the US agreed to several additional weeks of negotiations aimed at convincing the Iranians to suspend enrichment and accept the incentives package.
European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana, who represented the six in those talks, acknowledged last week that they had failed, setting the stage for a sanctions resolution. Russia and China were still expected to try to water down the impact of any sanctions during the drafting of a Security Council resolution.