Ghana votes for Iran referral

Accra/Vienna, Feb. 4. (GHP) -- Along with 26 other nations, Ghana today voted in favour of reporting Iran to the Security Council by dint of a resolution in the UN nuclear agency.

After the vote, Iran announced that it would immediately end its voluntary nuclear cooperation with the agency and that it would begin full-scale production of enriched uranium, which can be used to produce electricity or to help build nuclear bombs.

The 35-member board of governors of the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency passed the resolution 27-3 with five abstentions.

Only Cuba, Syria and Venezuela voted against the European-drafted resolution. Five countries ? Algeria, Belarus, Indonesia, Libya and South Africa ? abstained.

The IAEA session was called by the EU-3 to report Iran to the Security Council for violating provisions of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and for lack of confidence that its nuclear programme had no weapons component. The issues were reflected in the resolution but, at the same time, it also asked the Security Council not to take any punitive action against Iran until the IAEA director-general presented his report on 6 March. This was a concession to Russia and China, who had supported the EU-3 and the USA in a joint statement released by foreign ministers in London on 31 January.

The vote showed a clear divide in the non-aligned camp, with Ghana, India, Sri Lanka, Singapore, Ecuador, Colombia, Egypt and Yemen saying yes.

Of the board?s three Arab members, Egypt and Yemen voted in favour of the resolution.

The vote in Vienna was the climax of a two-and-a-half year campaign by the Bush administration to convince the world that suspicions about Iran's nuclear program are so serious that the issue must come before the Security Council for judgment.

In recent years, the agency's board has reported Iraq, North Korea, Libya and Romania to the Security Council for possible censure because of their nuclear programs. But such action does not necessarily translate into action.

North Korea, which secretly built nuclear weapons and withdrew from the Nonproliferation Treaty three years ago, has been reported twice. Although the Security Council has denounced North Korea, it has never voted to punish it.