Iran resolution 'a UN test' From: AAP May 03, 2006 A PROPOSED UN resolution requiring Iran to halt uranium enrichment would be a further test of Security Council credibility, Australia's new ambassador to the United Nations Robert Hill said today.
The former defence minister said today that past differences within the Security Council had weakened its credibility in recent years. "It is a further test of the Security Council," he said on ABC radio. "This is another instance where the international community has a right to expect that it meet its responsibility.
"I am not even confident that there will be an appropriate resolution of the Security Council. That is the next step and that is the issue that is being addressed at the moment."
The US, Britain and France are expected to introduce a resolution to the Security Council which if passed would legally oblige Iran to halt all work on uranium enrichment.
But Iran says it has been informed by two other Security Council permanent members, China and Russia, that they won't support sanctions or military. Both have the power to veto UN action.
Advertisement: Mr Hill said if the Security Council did pass a mandatory resolution, then a number of options might flow from it. "Discussion of sanctions it seems to me is a little premature," he said. "Basically we strongly believe it is not in the best interests of the international community that Iran become a nuclear weapons state."
Mr Hill said the International Atomic Energy Agency had reported on the ways in which Iran had not been complying with its obligations.
"I would like to see Iran comply with what clearly is the wish of the international community as a whole without the need for sanctions," he said.
"There are certainly differences as to how to go forward, it would seem, even within the Security Council.
"But everyone seems of one mind that it is not in the best interests of the international community that Iran become a nuclear weapons state and Iran should desist from its ambitions in that regard."
