LONDON, January 19 (AFP) - The United States has already begun campaigning at the UN atomic watchdog for Iran to be taken to the UN Security Council for measures against its nuclear work ahead of an emergency meeting in February that was confirmed, AFP reported.
US Undersecretary of State for arms control Robert Joseph saw delegates to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) ahead of the February 2 meeting of the IAEA's 35-nation board of governors on Iran, US spokesman Matthew Boland said.
The Vienna-based IAEA confirmed Wednesday the timing of the meeting, which was requested by Britain, Germany and France.
Boland said Iran's determination to resume nuclear fuel work showed that Tehran has "chosen confrontation" over "the path of confidence building and negotiation."
He said: "We need to enter a new phase of diplomacy, a phase that puts even greater diplomatic and political pressure on Iran to take the steps that the international community has called on it to take."
The Security Council has the power to impose sanctions.
Non-proliferation expert Mark Fitzpatrick told AFP from the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) think-tank in London that "the Europeans and the Americans will be using the two weeks ahead of the IAEA meeting to round up votes" on the agency's board.
A document obtained by AFP gives a summary of US thinking.
US ambassador to the IAEA Gregory Schulte said: "I ask for your support for this meeting and urge you to vote affirmatively to report Iran to the United Nations Security Council."
The Council has enforcement authority that includes sanctions but the US summary said: "We believe a gradual escalating approach could prove effective in persuading Iran to change course."
It said a first step would be for the Council to ask Iran to cooperate fully with a still inconclusive, three-year-old IAEA investigation of the Iranian nuclear program and IAEA calls for Tehran to halt all nuclear fuel work.
The so-called "non-paper," diplomatic jargon for a non-binding text, said: "Iran's nuclear activities, including its ongoing rush to develop enrichment technology, make sense only in the context of a nuclear weapons program."
The current crisis began when Iran said earlier this month that it was terminating a voluntary moratorium on sensitive nuclear research into enrichment, which makes fuel for nuclear reactors but what can also be the raw material for atom bombs.
The United States charges that Iran is using a program which Tehran says is a peaceful effort to generate electricity as a cover for developing nuclear weapons. Washington points to Iran's having hidden nuclear activities for almost two decades.
The non-paper said Iran's taking IAEA seals off key facilities in order to break its moratorium was "a serious escalation." Iran has not yet started up the facilities.
"If Iran is able to master the technology of uranium enrichment, it would be able to apply that technology to a covert program to manufacture nuclear weapons," the non-paper said.
The IAEA has found Iran in violation of nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) safeguards and the non-paper said an IAEA report last November "underscores that the IAEA's concerns with Iran's past nuclear activities are growing instead of diminishing."
The US document refers to "information Iran received on casting and machining hemispheres of enriched uranium. We know of no application for such hemispheres other than nuclear weapons."
It said Iranian threats to retaliate against Security Council referral cannot be allowed to block action "when collective international security is at stake."
