LONDON — As Western governments reaffirmed their will to report Iran and its nuclear program to the U.N. Security Council, Tehran lashed back Tuesday with a warning that such a move would mean "diplomacy is over."
Iran's chief nuclear negotiator, Ali Larijani, speaking on Iranian television, said his country would feel free to resume nuclear-related work and would rebuff U.N. inspections if the board of the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency put the Iran case before the council.
Larijani made his statement even as news services carried a report of a confidential IAEA document that alleges a variety of Iranian violations of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. The allegations, contained in a report expected to be released at an IAEA board meeting this week, bolster suspicions that Iran has been seeking to acquire nuclear weapons. Iran says its nuclear program is solely for civilian energy purposes.
Among other things, the report says, Iran recently showed IAEA inspectors a 15-page document that details how to cast "enriched, natural and depleted uranium metal into hemispherical forms" for the manufacture of "nuclear weapons components," according to an Associated Press report from Vienna.
The document, which Iran said it acquired unintentionally in a black-market transaction, has been put under IAEA seal, the report says. Iran informed the agency of the document's existence last year but only recently allowed inspectors to view it.
The IAEA board of governors is expected to approve a resolution to report Iran to the Security Council at a special meeting Thursday and Friday.
The five permanent members of the council -- the United States, Britain, France, Russia and China -- announced early Tuesday that they had agreed that the board should send the council a detailed outline of Iran's failure to comply with IAEA requirements.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told reporters Tuesday that the only debate among the permanent members was whether to report Iran immediately or wait until the March 6 meeting of the IAEA board.
Russia and China, which are trade partners with Iran, had hesitated to take action within the IAEA. They reached a compromise with the U.S. and European Union to make the report now but delay action on it until after March 6, Rice said.
The agreement to report Iran's case to the Security Council constituted "the referral we have been seeking," Rice said.
