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UN action against Iran likely to be impotent. Wotta surprise.
The decision to refer Iran to the UN over its nuclear weapons ambitions is viewed with scepticism by experts who have followedNorth Korea's more advanced nuclear threat. UN Security Council is expected to confront a defiant Iran next week, after months of fruitless talks with foreign ministers from Britain, France and Germany. The world body has the power to impose political and economic sanctions on Iran for violating the Nuclear Non-Proliferation treaty (NPT) by hiding much of its nuclear programme for two decades. It can even back those sanctions by military action if deemed necessary. "But in reality, the UN has proved to be a paper tiger in the past. You only have to look at North Korea," said Kim Tae-Woo, a nuclear policy specialist at the Korean Institute for Defense Analyses, affiliated to South Korea's ministry of defense. Iran said last year that it would defy international pressure and forge ahead with uranium enrichment and pull out of the NPT if referred to the UN Security Council. North Korea took that step in January 2003 after kicking out inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in December 2002. That same month North Korea removed IAEA seals and monitoring cameras from its main nuclear complex at Yongbyon, north of Pyongyang, and said it was reactivating its nuclear facilities, frozen under a 1994 accord with the United States. Experts say that Iran has been closely watching North Korea's path to nuclear confrontation with the outside world. In January, Iran removed IAEA seals and monitoring equipment from its nuclear facilities. "It looks like Tehran has taken a page out of Pyongyang's brinkmanship playbook," said Peter Beck, a Northeast Asia analyst for the International Crisis Group. One month after Pyongyang withdrew from the NPT, a step that Tehran has yet to take, the IAEA declared North Korea in violation of non-proliferation accords and referred the Stalinist state to the Security Council. A hopelessly split council, with Russia and China opposed to any sanctions against North Korea, expressed concern but took no action on what IAEA head Mohamed ElBaradei described as the world's most dangerous non-proliferation issue. He later said the UN failure to take action had set "the worst precedent of all" to would-be nuclear proliferators, telling them there were no consequences for violations. In the absence of any sanctions, North Korea declared itself a nuclear power two years later. Experts, including the IAEA, believe Pyongyang has since manufactured some six nuclear bombs. With similar disunity among its members, prospects are bleak that the UN Security Council will show more backbone against Iran, said Beck. Washington, along with its European allies, favours a tough line on Tehran while Russia and China, with close economic and energy ties to Iran, oppose sanctions. "The major impediment to UN action on North Korea was opposition from Russia and China," he said. "We face a similar situation with Iran. "At least Russia and perhaps others are not ready to get tough with Iran yet. That is the fundamental stumbling block." Kim said that North Korea's defiance of the world community has been relatively cost free. It is now freely producing plutonium and making nuclear bombs while the Security Council members turn a blind eye. "Given these facts, the possibility is even slimmer for them to produce any resolution to impose sanctions on Iran," he said. He cited Iran's position as a key oil producer and its ability to take reprisals against countries by shutting of oil supplies. "The United Nations or any other international body has never taken any substantial steps to punish problem countries regarding nuclear proliferation," he said. "I am not expecting any significant steps from that quarter." Posted by: Dan Darling 2006-03-10 |
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