Russia Ignores American Calls To Punish Iran
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

BRUSSELS — Secretary of State Rice said yesterday America would continue along a two-track strategy to deal with Iran, pressing for new sanctions and demanding Tehran come clean about its nuclear program while offering talks to sweeten the deal. But Russia ignored her calls to punish Iran.
Despite strong support from NATO allies in the wake of a new American intelligence report that concludes Iran actually stopped atomic weapons development in 2003, the top American diplomat was unable to persuade Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov of Russia on the urgency of fresh sanctions.
Ms. Rice said her talks with Mr. Lavrov were “an extension of other conversations we have had,” suggesting the two didn’t see eye to eye.
“So it was a continuation of that discussion and a recommitment to our two-track approach,” Ms. Rice said at a news conference, referring to sanctions and diplomacy.
Ms. Rice was explaining the American reevaluation of the Iranian threat during annual meetings at NATO’s Belgium headquarters. She also spent two days here galvanizing support for an American-led drive for a third, tougher set of U.N. Security Council sanctions on the clerical regime. The sanctions are meant to force Iran to roll back elements of a nuclear program it claims is peaceful but that America and its allies have said could lead to a bomb.
The latest American intelligence assessment appears to undermine the Bush administration’s claim that Iran is driving toward a bomb and thus poses an urgent threat. Ms. Rice and other American officials insist that Iran remains a danger and they note that it could restart a shelved program using technology and materials it is still amassing.
After seeing Ms. Rice at NATO, Mr. Lavrov told reporters: “It fully confirms the information that we have: that there is no military element in their nuclear program. We hope very much that these negotiations with Iran will continue.”
The question is really not whether to continue negotiations — a process that has so far yielded nothing — but whether Russia and fellow Security Council holdout China will agree that further coercive sanctions are the best way to persuade Iran to really bargain during those talks.
The European-led talks could offer Iran a package of incentives including civilian nuclear cooperation in return for a shutdown of uranium enrichment and reprocessing. Talks have never gotten off the ground because of American and European insistence that Iran suspend that disputed uranium work while talking. Iran has refused.
Mr. Lavrov, who has become the public face of opposition to the American and European sanctions strategy, has maintained Russia has no evidence that Tehran had ever had a secret nuclear weapons program in violation of international treaty obligations.
He did not discuss what Ms. Rice had told him.
His comments were not unexpected given past Russian statements on the issue, but nevertheless dealt a setback to efforts to boost pressure on Iran to suspend uranium enrichment and reprocessing activities with a new U.N. Security Council sanctions resolution.
China, another key participant in the so-called “P5+1” group of world powers now trying to craft such a resolution, is also resisting. The P5+1 includes the five permanent members of the Security Council — Britain, China, France, Russia, and America — plus Germany.
Apart from China and Russia, the others have endorsed upping pressure on Iran since the release on Monday of the new American National Intelligence Estimate on Iran, which represented a surprising turnaround in Washington’s assessment of Iranian intentions.