Russia And China Endorse Atomic Energy Agency's Rebuke Of Iran

The United Nations nuclear watchdog demanded Friday that Iran immediately freeze operations at a once secret uranium enrichment plant, a sharp rebuke that bore added weight because it was endorsed by Russia and China.

The governing body of the watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, meeting in Vienna, Austira, also expressed “serious concern” about potential military aspects of Iran’s nuclear program.

Administration officials held up the statement as a victory for President Obama’s diplomatic efforts to coax both Russia and China to increase the pressure on Iran. They said that they had begun working on a sanctions package, which would be brought before the United Nations Security Council if Iran did not meet the year-end deadline imposed by President Obama to make progress on the issue.

“Today’s overwhelming vote at the I.A.E.A.’s Board of Governors demonstrates the resolve and unity of the international community with regard to Iran’s nuclear program,” the White House spokesman, Robert Gibbs, said in a statement. “Indeed, the fact that 25 countries from all parts of the world cast their votes in favor shows the urgent need for Iran to address the growing international deficit of confidence in its intentions.”

In recent weeks, the Obama administration has been painstakingly wooing Russia and China, the two permanent members of the Security Council most averse to imposing sanctions.

Russia’s president, Dmitri A. Medvedev, has rewarded the administration’s outreach on missile defense with stronger statements signaling more willingness to impose sanctions on Iran. After meeting with President Obama in Singapore earlier this month, President Medvedev said he was not happy about how long it was taking Iran to respond to an offer to move its enriched uranium out of the country for further processing, adding that “other measures” might have to be considered.

Persuading China has, so far, proven more difficult. After meeting with President Obama in Beijing, China’s president, Hu Jintao, said nothing about additional pressure on Iran.

U.S. administration officials said that behind the scenes they had been working hard to get China on board, and expressed hope that those efforts would pay off. Before President Obama traveled to Beijing this month, the United States sent two senior National Security Council officials, Jeff Bader and Dennis Ross, to China to make a personal case for why the United States was so concerned about Iran’s nuclear program, said administration officials.

Iranian officials insist that the nation’s nuclear program is for nuclear energy, although many nations believe Iran is trying to develop nuclear weapons.

Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff, said China’s support on Iran and its decision to set a climate change goal on Thursday showed that President Obama’s trip to Beijing was producing results despite criticism of the visit. “This is the product of engagement,” said Emanuel, adding that it was “a direct result” of the trip.

Yet even as the United States and its Western allies were exulting over the step by an agency often accused of being too soft on Iran, administration officials and foreign policy experts cautioned that the largely symbolic resolution was a long way from meaningful sanctions from the Security Council.

Indeed, although the resolution approved on Friday in Vienna is the first time that the I.A.E.A.’s board has demanded an immediate halt to construction of the Iran uranium enrichment facility at Qum, it falls short of the diplomatic step of finding Iran in formal “noncompliance” or violation of its nonproliferation commitments, which would provide strong evidence to bolster the drive for a new round of sanctions.

Administration officials and Western diplomats were still holding out hope, however slim, that a negotiated deal with Iran before the end of the year may be possible.

For one thing, even if Russia and China do end up agreeing to additional sanctions, such measures have so far had little effect on Iran’s behavior.

Beyond that there is the Israeli government’s running threat, or bluff, that it may take military action against Iran in 2010 if negotiations fail - an action that could provoke Iranian retaliation against United States troops in neighboring Afghanistan.

The proposal to ship Iran’s uranium out of the country, where it would be processed into nuclear fuel for use in a medical reactor in Tehran, “is still on the table,” a senior administration official said Friday. But, he added, “time is running short.”

The demand by the I.A.E.A. board for the immediate suspension of construction at the Qum enrichment plant was the first time it had made such a demand of Tehran. Iran has told the agency that it plans to complete the half-built facility, which is tunneled into the side of a mountain, by 2011.

The vote was 27 in favor, 3 against and 5 abstentions. China and Russia voted for the rebuke.

Iran’s nuclear efforts involve hundreds of sites, programs and planned facilities. The closest the international agency’s board had previously come to demanding a halt to the establishment of a new plant came in 2006 when it requested that Iran “reconsider the construction” of a nuclear reactor at Arak. Western experts fear that Iran could use the Arak reactor, on which it continues to work, to make plutonium fuel for nuclear warheads.

Daryl G. Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, a private group based in Washington, called the resolution “the appropriate censure” given the Qum disclosure. “The revelation has led to an important shift in opinion at the board and probably at the Security Council,” he said. “Patience with Iran is running out and, more importantly, Qum severely undercuts Iran’s claims that its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes.”

The resolution was the first against Iran by the agency’s 35-nation Board of Governors since February 2006. At that time, the board criticized Iran’s “many failures and breaches of its obligations” to inform the agency of its nuclear activities, as well as its defiance in ignoring calls for the suspension of uranium enrichment.