U.N. Council to Consider Iran Sanctions

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, right, meets a group of U.S. church ministers in Tehran, Iran, Saturday, Feb. 24, 2007. Iran's hard-line president told a group of American ministers that his fellow citizens do not have anything against Americans, but oppose U.S. policy in the region, the official Islamic Republic News Agency reported. "The Iranian nation does not hate or oppose the American people," the agency quoted Ahmadinejad, as saying during a meeting with American ministers on a trip to improve relations between the peoples of Iran and the United States. A picture of the late Iranian revolutionary founder Ayatollah Khomeini hangs on the wall. An unidentified translator sits at second right. (AP Photo/ISNA, Amir Pourmand) (Amir Pourmand - AP)

LONDON -- Restrictions on trade and arms for Iran were likely to be considered by the five permanent U.N. Security Council members and Germany, as the world powers on Monday sought new ways to pressure the country to suspend parts of its nuclear program.

Senior representatives of the six nations were in London to discuss how to respond to Iran's failure to respect a U.N. deadline to halt its uranium enrichment work.

The U.N.'s nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, confirmed Thursday that Iran had ignored a Security Council ultimatum to freeze enrichment _ a possible pathway to nuclear arms _ and had instead expanded its program.

A senior British diplomat attending Monday's meeting at the Foreign Office said the representatives would examine options for further sanctions, including whittling away at export credits made available to companies that trade with Iran. Restrictions on arms exports to Iran also are likely to be discussed, said the diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject.

In Washington, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said any futher actions would likely be incremental: "This is designed to proportionally increase pressure on Tehran."

McCormack said limited economic sanctions against Iran implemented in December had produced surprising results. "It started a very public discussion in Iran about the wisdom of their current course of defying the international system," he said.

After the meeting, the diplomats will return to their home capitals to report on their discussions.

The U.S. and its European allies have been urging Iran to halt enrichment and re-enter negotiations meant to ease concerns that the country could be intending to use its civilian nuclear power program as a cover to produce weapons. Iran insists its only interest in the technology is for the production of fuel for nuclear power plants.

In Russia, President Vladimir Putin and his foreign minister expressed concern Monday about talk of potential U.S. strikes against Iran in a televised exchange that underscored their demands for a negotiated solution.

"On the one hand, the Iranian leadership has not yet given satisfactory answers to well-known questions" posed by the IAEA, which is trying to determine whether Iran may be seeking to develop nuclear weapons, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told Putin during a Cabinet meeting.

"On the other hand, prognoses and predictions that strikes will be conducted against Iran have become more common, and this causes concern," Lavrov said, adding that Vice President Dick Cheney "allowed such a possibility in recent comments."

Cheney said last week that the United States believes "it would be a serious mistake if a nation such as Iran became a nuclear power," and reaffirmed the Bush administration's policy that "all options are on the table" to deter Iran.