LONDON, 17 January 2006 — Saudi Arabia appealed yesterday for Iran to abide by its promise not to develop nuclear weapons and spark a regional arms race, but said the West bore some responsibility by letting Israel build its own nuclear arsenal. The Jewish state has never confirmed or denied having atomic bombs, maintaining a policy of ambiguity.
“I think the West allowing Israel to establish its nuclear capability has done the damage that we are all suffering from now. There are other countries that now are perhaps pursuing the same role,” Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al-Faisal said. “But we hope that Iran will resist this temptation,” he told BBC radio.
Prince Saud said diplomacy must be given more time. “Iran is a country of long history and long civilization and therefore pride ... Giving a chance for diplomacy as a primary effort to solve these problems would be wise,” he said. He said there could be no purpose in Iran developing nuclear weapons since if it fired them at Israel, it would kill Palestinians. If Iranian nuclear weapons missed Israel, they would hit Saudi Arabia or Jordan, he said.
But he also pledged that even if Iran did break its promise and go ahead, Saudi Arabia would not follow suit. “Absolutely not. We don’t believe in this at all. A nuclear weapon doesn’t give you safety. A nuclear weapon is a threat.”
In an interview in the Times newspaper the prince, who was in London for a conference on terrorism, urged Iran to adopt the Saudi position and help turn the Gulf into a nuclear-free zone. “We hope that they will join us in this policy and assure that no new threat of arms race happens in this region,” he said, urging Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to toe a more moderate line.
Meanwhile, European powers yesterday began drafting a resolution to have Iran referred to the UN Security Council next month over its nuclear work, diplomats said, after Russia and the West neared agreement in dealing with Tehran.
Britain’s Foreign Office said the resolution would call for an emergency meeting of the UN nuclear watchdog agency’s board in Vienna on Feb. 2-3 to hold a referral ballot.
Iran’s resumption of research that could advance a quest for civilian atomic energy or bombs has sparked a flurry of Western diplomacy in pursuit of an International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) vote to send Iran to the council for possible sanctions.
Diplomats said a London meeting yesterday of permanent council members Britain, France, Russia, China and the United States, along with Germany, sought to bridge differences over Iran to enable an emergency IAEA board meeting and vote.
After Russia said it was “very close” to Western views on Iran, which favor diplomatic action to curb its atomic project, Germany, France and Britain began drafting a referral resolution to submit to the IAEA’s 35-nation board, an EU diplomat said. “It’s short. It calls for (IAEA Director General Mohamed) El-Baradei to report Iran to the Security Council,” the diplomat said, asking for anonymity because of the subject’s sensitivity. Moscow, with a $1 billion stake building Iran’s first atomic reactor, and Beijing, reliant on Iranian oil imports, have so far thwarted such a step by the IAEA board.
President Vladimir Putin signaled a change when he said after talks with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Moscow: “As for Russia, and Germany and our European partners and the United States, we have very close positions on the Iranian problem.” It was the clearest hint yet that Moscow was losing patience with the country since it resumed nuclear fuel research last week.
However, Putin also warned the crisis should be solved “without abrupt, erroneous steps” — a possible nod to concerns of some that a rapid push toward UN sanctions could backfire.
