By DPA
London : Senior officials from member states of the UN Security Council and Germany have agreed to draw up the text for a third UN resolution to pressure Iran over its nuclear programme.
Further sanctions against Iran are expected to be the outcome. Observers Friday said China and Russia appeared finally to have gone along with adopting a tougher stance after initial reluctance.
Political directors of the group agreed to meet again Nov 19, the British Foreign Office said. The officials are from the so-called E3 group of European nations – Britain, France and Germany – plus the US, Russia and China.
It was also agreed to call on European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana to have more talks with Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator, and to report back to the six.
In Washington, the US expressed disappointment in the lack of a “sense of urgency” on the part of China and Russia.
US State Department Deputy Spokesman Tom Casey said that while there was agreement on the need to move forward, “the speed with which the Chinese and Russians wish to do so is not as fast as we’d like”.
“There was no decision reached on text of a new resolution,” Casey said.
Friday’s meeting was the latest of a sequence of exchanges reflecting growing international concern over Iran’s alleged ambitions to develop a military nuclear capability.
In Tehran earlier, former Iranian President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani warned the US against getting into another “quagmire” if it attacked Iran.
“Threats against Iran would just increase international tensions and if realized, the US would get (after Iraq) into another quagmire. The end of the story would then be unpredictable,” Rafsanjani said at the Friday prayer ceremony at Tehran University.
Rafsanjani said Iran was cooperating with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to remove all ambiguities and the US should allow this process to continue in order to reach a diplomatic settlement.
Washington accuses Tehran of developing nuclear weapons and while imposing the harshest sanctions against Iran since 1979, Washington has not fully ruled out military options against the Islamic state.
Rafsanjani had Thursday called on the government to take the latest US threats and sanctions seriously.
The moderate cleric said that Iran had faced numerous conspiracies since the 1979 Islamic revolution, “but the status quo is unprecedented and requires full vigilance”.
Rafsanjani, currently head of the clergy body the Experts’ Assembly, is a fierce opponent of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s policies.
Ahmadinejad himself has so far played down the probability of a US military strike on Iran’s nuclear plants, but has warned of harsh retaliation if such attacks took place, including “martyrdom operations” by Iranian forces.