UNITED NATIONS, 1 August 2006 — The UN Security Council passed a weakened resolution yesterday giving Iran until Aug. 31 to suspend uranium enrichment or face the threat of economic and diplomatic sanctions.

Iran immediately rejected the council action, saying the resolution would only make negotiations more difficult over a package of incentives offered in June for it to suspend enrichment.

“All along it has been the persistence of some to draw arbitrary red lines and deadlines that has closed the door to any compromise,” Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations, Javad Zarif, said. “This tendency has single handedly blocked success and in most cases killed proposals in their infancy.”

“This approach will not lead to any productive outcome and in fact it can only exacerbate the situation,” he said.

Because of Russian and Chinese demands, the text was watered down from earlier drafts, which would have made the threat of sanctions immediate. It now essentially requires the council to hold more discussions before it considers sanctions. The resolution passed by a vote of 14-1. Qatar, which represents Arab states on the council, cast the lone dissenting vote. Drafted by Britain, France and Germany with US backing, the resolution follows a July 12 agreement — by the foreign ministers of those four countries, plus Russia and China — to refer Tehran to the Security Council for not responding to the incentives package.

The ministers asked that council members adopt a resolution making Iran’s suspension of enrichment activities mandatory. The resolution includes that demand and calls on all states “to exercise vigilance” in preventing the transfer of all goods that could be used for Iran’s enrichment and ballistic missile programs.

“If you remember the reason for that resolution is to make the suspension of enrichment and related activities mandatory and then to give Iran a deadline by which it should accept the now mandatory requirement that it suspend its enrichment activities,” US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told reporters on a flight from Jerusalem.

Zarif told the council it had no legal legitimacy to demand that Iran suspend uranium enrichment and reprocessing.