Foreign Minister Hilger Criticizes Revised Draft UN Security Council Resolution on Iran

Monday, 11. December 2006

Greifenberg Press Agency (GPA)

GREIFENBERG (GPA) - Greifenberg's Foreign Minister Joseph Hilger today criticized a revised draft U.N. Security Council resolution on Iran, which Britain and France plan to introduce on today.

Greifenberg supported an earlier version of the draft saying the sanctions it proposed against Iran, suspected by the West of working on its own nuclear weapons, although harsh, would serve to “put Tehran on notice that its actions are no longer tolerable to the international community.”

The revised version, backed by the United States, was circulated to the 15 members of the U.N. Security Council on Friday. Acknowledging that some nations were reluctant to push Iran too far, fearing Tehran would simply become more defiant in its stand, Hilger said that the new draft, which bans only export of the most sensitive materials and technology to Iran, would ultimately prove to be too limited of a response to the looming crisis with the regime of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, praised the revised drafter resolution.  "The draft is different from the initial version offered by our European colleagues," Lavrov told a news conference. "Its concept was changed along the lines of the Russian proposals aimed at encouraging Iran to sit down at the negotiating table." Russia said last week it might back mild sanctions against Iran, but Lavrov stopped short of saying whether Russia, a veto-wielding member of the Security Council, would back the revised version.

Until recently, Russia opposed any sanctions against Iran, its increasingly important trade and economic partner. Russia's biggest concern was not to allow sanctions to affect its $800-billion project to build nuclear power station in Bushehr, Iran, due to be completed next year.