How UN Politics Stop Sanctions

IAEA Members Critical of US Pressure On ElBaradei --Cuba lashed out Tuesday at countries that ’interfere’ in Iran’s nuclear case--an allusion to US criticism about the International Atomic Energy Agency’s newest Tehran probe.
Beyond her comments as Cuba’s chief IAEA delegate, Norma Miguelina Goicochea Estenoz also expressed support for the work of the agency and its head, Mohamed ElBaradei in her separate capacity as head of the agency’s nonaligned board members, AP reported.
Her statements outside the agency’s 35-nation board meeting reflected the main dispute at the gathering: whether a pact committing Iran to cooperate with an agency probe of past nuclear activities will blunt attempts to pressure Tehran to scrap uranium enrichmentÑtechnology that could be used to make a bomb.

A diplomat attending the closed meeting told The Associated Press that Goicochea Estenoz told delegates that, if Iran answered all questions to the satisfaction of the IAEA, the country should no longer be treated as a special case.
That would mean an end to UN sanctions and the threat of new ones for Iran’s refusal to end uranium enrichment--a position strongly opposed by the United States and some other Western countries.

Before the start of the board meeting, Goicochea Estenoz called for “noninterference in the work of the agency,“ adding that nonaligned countries offered “full support for the professionalism of“ ElBaradei.

She was even more direct as Cuba’s chief delegate, criticizing countries “that always want to interfere“ with ElBaradei and his staff and speaking of a “real feeling among many member states“ that the West was exerting undue pressure on the IAEA chief.
Despite their reservations about the plan, Washington and other nations backing new UN sanctions against Tehran have toned down initial criticism because they have realized that opposition could backfire.

Too much criticism could leave the impression that the US, France and Britain, the most vocal backers of new UN sanctions, did not care about resolving the issue that had sent Iran’s nuclear file to the Security Council in the first place.

Cuba and the majority of the other nonaligned nations, which make up about a third of the board, insist the last month’s pact represents a potential breakthrough in more than four years of diplomatic maneuvering meant to reduce any nuclear threat from Iran.