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Britain and France call for new Security Council resolution |
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Written by AIM Newsdesk
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Friday, 22 February 2008 |
Britain and France have officially introduced the text for a new UN Security
Council resolution calling for further sanctions against Iran, over what it
terms, ‘Iran’s refusal to halt its nuclear program’.
“The text that we’ve circulated today reflects some of the comments we’ve had
back from delegations,” John Sawers, the UK’s UN envoy said. He further stated
that “this is as part of our twin-track approach of requiring Iran to suspend
their most sensitive nuclear activities and to abide by the requests of the IAEA
for full transparency."
This call for a new resolution is despite the fact that Iran has been subjected
to and has entertained the most extensive inspections in the history of the IAEA
and has continuously maintained that its nuclear program is exclusively for
peaceful purposes. Up to date, no such evidence has been found to contradict
this official declaration by Iran.
This resolution championed by Britain and France comes at a time when, the UN nuclear watchdog chief Mohammed ElBaradei, has hailed Iran’s cooperation with his team and has pointed to good progress being made to resolve
all the outstanding issues, most of which have been finalized except a handful.
The document calls for further sanctions against two Iranian banks, inspections
of air freight and shipping companies - Iran Air Cargo and Islamic Republic of
Iran Shipping Line - and calls for tighter vigilance by those countries trading
or issuing loans to Tehran.
The draft document also calls for the nuclear watchdog IAEA and EU to support
the Islamic Republic and to strengthen diplomatic ties with the six nations to
resolve the problem over Iran's nuclear program.
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