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U.N. draft targets Iran's missiles

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UNITED NATIONS (CNN) -- European members of the U.N. Security Council have proposed sanctions that would target Iran's nuclear and ballistic missile program, including a ban on the sale of technology and material related to those programs and a freeze of financial assets of officials involved in those programs.

Jean Marc de la Sabliere, France's U.N. ambassador, told reporters the draft resolution, circulated Wednesday by France, the United Kingdom and Germany to China, Russia and the United States, would also impose a travel ban on officials involved in Iran's nuclear weapons program.

However, the draft would allow Russia's construction work on the Bushehr nuclear power plant to go forward.

However, the U.S. has signaled it wants restrictions on the building of the reactor to also form part of the draft.

The Bush administration wants to make sure Moscow's work on a power plant at Bushehr does not include a fuel cycle, capable of use in weapons, U.S. officials in Washington said, according to the Reuters News service.

"This is a first response, a response which is focused," de la Sabliere said.

"It's firm and focused on the sensitive nuclear activities and we have always said that, should Iran change position and resume its suspension of its enrichment activities, then the council will lift the sanctions."

Nicholas Burns, the U.S. undersecretary of state, told Reuters television he believed that Bushehr would not be a "major stumbling point."

Burns, visiting Colombia, said that Washington was "comfortable" with the idea of states providing Tehran with nuclear fuel and energy -- providing that a fuel cycle with the capability to make weapons was excluded.

The current U.N. Security Council draft from the Europeans exempts construction of Bushehr and allows some 1,500 Russians to continue working at the site.

"We have always said there would be an exception for Bushehr," France's U.N. Ambassador Jean-Marc de la Sabliere told reporters.

"Bushehr is a red line for the Russians," said another European council member, according to Reuters.

The plant in southwestern Iran is due to begin operation next year.

Second centrifuge

In other developments, Iran has installed a second cascade for uranium enrichment and will start injecting uranium gas into it within days, Iran's student news agency ISNA reported on Wednesday.

"Iran's second cascade has been installed two weeks ago and the injection of gas into it will be done this week," the agency quoted an informed source as saying.

"Soon after injection of the gas, we will obtain the product of the second centrifuge cascade."

Diplomats said earlier this week that Iran appeared to be testing the second batch of centrifuges which can enrich uranium for either power plan or nuclear bomb fuel, Reuters reports.

Its original cascade first produced a tiny amount of home-grown enriched uranium in April.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Monday that Western powers were wrong if they thought his country would retreat under political pressure from its nuclear plans.

The Islamic Republic says it wants to enrich uranium only to generate electricity. The West suspects that OPEC's No. 2 oil exporter is trying to build bombs under the guise of a civilian program to threaten Israel and Western interests.

Western intelligence experts estimate Iran remains 3 to 10 years away from an industrial-scale operation of thousands of centrifuges that could yield enough fuel for nuclear bombs.

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