Six powers to start work on Iran sanctions: U.S. envoy

An Iranian operator monitors the nuclear power plant unit in Bushehr, about 1,215 km (755 miles) south of Tehran, November 30, 2009.

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Six world powers, including China, agreed on Wednesday to start drawing up new sanctions on Iran over its nuclear program in the next few days, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations said.

U.S. envoy Susan Rice was confirming what diplomats had told Reuters -- that senior foreign ministry officials from Britain, the United States, France, Russia and Germany had reached agreement with China during a conference call.

"China has agreed to sit down and begin serious negotiations here in New York with the others in the (group of six) ... as a first step toward getting the entire Security Council on board with a tough sanctions regime against Iran," Rice said in an interview on CNN television.

"This is progress, but the negotiations have yet to begin in earnest," she said. "We have shared our thoughts on what elements should be in a tough U.N. Security Council resolution. We're gratified that ... now we're going to get down to the nuts and bolts of negotiations. That's what's necessary."

Rice said Washington and its allies will work "intensively in the coming weeks to build the strongest possible agreement to a set of sanctions that will put real pressure on Iran."

President Barack Obama said on Tuesday that he wants a new Iran sanctions resolution adopted within weeks, not months.

China's agreement is important because it has veto power on the Security Council, as do the United States, Britain, France and Russia.

The Western powers in the group hope to organize a meeting of the six powers at the ambassadorial level in New York in the coming days to get the process of drafting a sanctions resolution going, several diplomats told Reuters.

The basis for negotiations, diplomats said, will be a U.S. sanctions proposal that Washington agreed with its European allies and passed on to Russia and China around a month ago.

NEGOTIATIONS COULD DRAG ON FOR MONTHS

Moscow, like Beijing, reluctantly backed three previous rounds of U.N. sanctions against Tehran for refusing to halt enrichment as demanded by five Security Council resolutions. Iran rejects Western charges that its atomic program is aimed at developing bombs and says enrichment is a sovereign right.

Tehran insists its nuclear program is intended only to peacefully generate electricity.

Diplomats say China has been slowly and reluctantly falling in line with the other powers involved in the negotiations on Iran by backing the idea of new U.N. sanctions against Tehran, though Beijing, like Moscow, wants any new steps to be weak.

Although the four Western powers would like a resolution to be adopted next month, before a month-long U.N. conference on the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in May, diplomats say the negotiation process could drag on at least until June as China and Russia work hard to dilute any proposed punitive steps.

But Moscow, Western diplomats say, has become increasingly impatient with Iran's rejection of a U.N.-backed nuclear fuel offer that would have moved Tehran's low-enriched uranium stocks to Russia and France to process it into fuel for an aging research reactor that produces medical isotopes.

Both Russia and China have privately urged Iran to accept the offer as a goodwill gesture, but Western diplomats said Beijing and Moscow did not receive any clear responses from Tehran. That, diplomats say, is one of the reasons China agreed to join negotiations on a new U.N. sanctions resolution.

"China said it was on the same page as Russia," a diplomat said, referring to Wednesday's conference call.

The U.S.-drafted sanctions proposal would expand an existing U.N. blacklist, with a new focus on Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps members and firms it controls.

A French call for energy-sector sanctions was left out of the U.S. draft, as was a proposed ban on transactions linked to Iran's central bank, which Germany opposed, diplomats said.

But it does call for expanding existing limits on arms trade with Iran into a full weapons embargo, with an inspection regime similar to one in place for North Korea and would blacklist several Iranian shipping firms.

(Additional reporting by Michelle Nichols; Editing by Vicki Allen and Philip Barbara)