LONDON — Britain, France and Germany announced Monday that they will ask the U.N. nuclear monitoring agency to meet in two weeks to consider referring Iran to the Security Council over its nuclear ambitions, but the trio failed to bring aboard Russia and China.
A day of consultations here among the European governments and senior officials from Russia, China and the United States produced no consensus statement. This was an apparent sign of lingering Russian and Chinese reluctance to quickly apply additional pressure to Iran, which last week reopened a nuclear research facility shuttered by the International Atomic Energy Agency. Both nations have important commercial ties with Iran.
Although Russia insisted its position was "very close" to that of the Europeans and the United States -- which want the International Atomic Energy Agency to refer Iran immediately to the Security Council -- President Vladimir V. Putin cautioned against making "sharp, erroneous moves ... [and] premature statements" regarding punitive actions by the United Nations.
"I will not allow the Foreign Ministry to take even one false step," he said, adding that Iran still could accept his offer to conduct limited uranium enrichment with Iran on Russian territory. Such a plan could ensure that the enrichment does not exceed the level necessary to produce fuel for power plants.
"The main problem is uranium enrichment," Putin said after meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel at the Kremlin.
"We proposed to create a joint venture with our Iranian partners to enrich uranium in Russia, and we have heard different views from our Iranian partners. One of them was expressed by the Iranian Foreign Ministry, which [is that] Tehran does not rule out such an option."
China's position was less clear. Last week, Beijing said a referral to the U.N. Security Council could "complicate" the situation. China buys much of its oil and gas from Iran.
Senior diplomats of the five veto-wielding permanent members of the Security Council, plus Germany, took part in the talks, which were billed as informal.
A British Foreign Office spokesman said at the end of the day that the European countries had informed the others that they intended to seek a special meeting of the IAEA board of governors in Vienna on Feb. 2 and 3, when they are expected to urge the board to refer Iran to the Security Council.
