The nuclear programmes of Iran and North Korea pose the two greatest threats to world peace and could spark a nuclear arms race among their neighbours, Germany's foreign minister said on Wednesday.
Germany, France and Britain are drafting a UN Security Council resolution that would impose sanctions on Iran for refusing to halt its uranium enrichment programme, which the West fears could be used to develop atomic weapons. On Saturday, the Security Council meted out sanctions against North Korea, which tested a nuclear device on October 9.
"Both of these provocations can awaken the desire for nuclear weapons among their neighbours. We must prevent this, which is why we're not at the end of this conflict but at the beginning," Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier was quoted as saying in an interview with German weekly magazine Stern.
But Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, in comments reported by the RIA news agency, contested the view that Iran represented a threat to world peace. "It is necessary to act on Iran but that action should be in direct proportion to what is really happening," the agency quoted Lavrov as saying.
"And what is really happening is what the IAEA (UN nuclear watchdog) reports to us. And the IAEA is not reporting to us about the presence there of a threat to peace and security." Russia, along with China, the United States, Britain and France, is a veto-holding permanent member of the Council. Iranian nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani told EU states on Wednesday they would be the losers if they joined the United States to push through a punitive resolution against Tehran.
"If the (EU) yields to American pressure, it is natural that the situation will become radical. The world will not end but it will affect all our co-operation, in which I think the other side will lose more," he told the semi-official Mehr News Agency.
Larijani did not elaborate. Iran in the past has threatened, if pushed, to review dealings with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN watchdog that inspects nuclear facilities in member states. In June, Russia and China joined France, Britain, Germany and the United States in offering Tehran economic and political incentives in exchange for a suspension of enrichment work.
But Iran, which says its nuclear ambitions are limited to peaceful electricity generation, refuses to stop enriching. Steinmeier reiterated that the incentives offer remained on the table and "promised the country a way out of its isolation." At a meeting in Luxembourg on Tuesday, the EU's 25 foreign ministers called for incremental measures that officials said would be targeted first at individuals, companies and materials involved in Iranian uranium enrichment activities.
Russia and China have said they dislike the idea of hitting Iran with sanctions and have called for renewed talks. In New York, French UN Ambassador Jean-Marc de la Sabliere said France, Britain and Germany aimed to put forward their draft resolution on Wednesday or Thursday.
Larijani said that if a new resolution was issued by the Security Council, "we will not be at the point that we are in now for the continuation of talks. "If it is imagined that it is possible to simultaneously use the policy of carrot and stick, it is an error in calculation." A European Union diplomat noted the three big EU powers continued to stress that talks could be revived.
"But you can't really further discussions on tough sanctions while at same time keeping (the) door (open) for negotiations. It's a contradiction, which means the sanctions discussed won't be tough," the diplomat said.