Russia Says No to Iran Nuclear Sanctions * Article

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MOSCOW -- Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov made it clear Thursday that Moscow wouldn't back any new rounds of tough sanctions against Iran in the United Nations Security Council, and he dismissed a U.S. timetable for securing progress from Iran on ending its nuclear-fuel program.

Mr. Lavrov's comments in Moscow cast doubt over the ability of the U.S. to succeed in an effort to secure international backing for new sanctions. They also appeared to end any hopes that the Obama administration's "reset" of troubled relations with Russia would lead to Moscow's support for one of the top U.S. foreign policy priorities.

Just a day after U.S. officials warned that Iran may already have enough enriched uranium to make a bomb if processed further, Mr. Lavrov said negotiations should begin without any imposed timetable. He also said that even if Iran tried to make weapons-grade fuel it would be detected and there would be time to respond.

"I do not think those sanctions will be approved by the United Nations Security Council," Mr. Lavrov said.

President Barack Obama has set a deadline of September for progress on talks with Iran, and the U.S. and its allies have planned to work on an international consensus by the end of the month when the United Nations General Assembly meets in New York, with Mr. Obama playing host. But Russia wields a veto on the 15-member council.

"We're pretty disappointed with the Russian position so far," a senior U.S. official said of Mr. Lavrov's comments. Officials said any new U.N. sanctions against Iran were now unlikely in the near term, and said their best hope would be to coordinate new financial penalties with the members of the European Union instead.

Mr. Lavrov's comments also came as a political storm brewed in Israel over the disclosure that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had secretly traveled to Moscow earlier this week, while his staff gave the media a false cover story. Speculation swirled that he was there to push for Russian cooperation in halting its own arms sales to Iran and in slowing down Iran's nuclear program.

But a more likely explanation also emerged: Some analysts said Mr. Netanyahu may have flown to discuss the possibility of Moscow hosting an Israeli-Palestinian peace summit later this year. Moscow would provide neutral territory and Russia's participation could increase the credibility of talks.

Mr. Lavrov's comments Thursday, to an annual meeting of Russia experts known as the Valdai Club, was the second hit in two days to U.S. hopes of coaxing Iran to compromise on development of its nucelar program while dangling the threat of international consequences if it does.

Senior U.S. officials Thursday said that Iran's own proposal the day before on the nuclear issue was insulting to Western countries who had hoped to resolve their dispute with Tehran through diplomatic channels. One senior official said the document's five pages, which didn't address nuclear-fuel production or a timetable for talks, appeared to illustrate that Tehran simply wasn't prepared to engage Washington and the international community, perhaps because of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's domestic political problems.

The official added that Tehran seemed to be trying to create a framework for discussions whereby the issue of Iran's enrichment of uranium wouldn't be addressed at all. "This is clearly not going to happen," said the U.S. official. "The Iranian response was very much a disappointment."

Mr. Lavrov disagreed with the U.S. on this point as well, asserting there was "something there to use" in the proposal Iran sent this week to the U.S., Russia, China, France, Britain and Germany. He said it was promising that Iran said in the document it was ready for comprehensive talks on security in the region. "They need an equal place in this regional dialogue," he said. "Iran is a partner that has never harmed Russia in any way."

The rebuffs from Tehran and Moscow over the Obama administration's efforts to persuade Iran through engagement appear to leave the U.S. with few good options in trying to block the country from developing a uranium stockpile. The U.S. and European governments believe a nuclear Iran could trigger a nuclear arms race in the Middle East. Meanwhile, Israel has hinted that it might conduct airstrikes against Iran's nuclear infrastructure to prevent that happening.

Russia's top diplomat also appeared to dismiss U.S. and Israeli warnings of urgency. If Iran did try to enrich uranium to weapons grade, he said, it would have to reconfigure its cascades of centrifuges, a move that would immediately be picked up by cameras installed and monitored by inspectors from the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency. After that, the international community would have time to respond, he said.

Western nuclear analysts say that if Iran can develop enough highly enriched uranium it would be able to able to "break out" relatively quickly to manufacture a working weapon. Iran says it wants enriched uranium purely for civilian purposes.

Mr. Lavrov said he welcomed the Obama administration's change in "style," and its willingness to listen to others -- a stark contrast, he said, to the previous administration of President George W. Bush. He noted that Russia since its "reset" of relations already has agreed to allow U.S. troops and military equipment to cross its territory to resupply the war effort in Afghanistan. He said Moscow had a common interest in seeing Western troops in that country succeed.

But Mr. Lavrov was skeptical about the depth of change in the U.S. approach under Mr. Obama, indicating that U.S. behavior was likely to change only slowly as the realities of what he called a multipolar world, in which the U.S. is just "the first among equals," increasingly restricts U.S. ability to impose its will globally. "I don't think anyone in this room believes that any U.S. administration would forget its strategic goal: to stay No. 1," and pursue its interests all around the world, Mr. Lavrov said.

He also said that it won't be a concession to Russia if the U.S., as he expects it to, drops plans to station a missile-defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic. Rather than leading to any favors in return by Russia, he called such a move merely the correction of a strategic mistake by Mr. Obama's predecessor.

In a further reminder of continuing U.S.-Russian differences, Mr. Lavrov on Thursday also met with President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela. Mr. Chavez agreed to recognize the independence of the breakaway territories of Abkhazia and South Ossetia in Georgia, whose independence Russia recognized after a brief war last year. The U.S. and Europe strongly oppose the change of borders.

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