US and Britain push for tighter sanctions on Iran

The US and Britain are pushing ahead with plans to tighten international sanctions on Tehran, despite concerns about greater Russian and Chinese resistance after the latest US intelligence assessment concluded that Iran had halted a nuclear weapons programme four years ago under diplomatic pressure.

The Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, held talks in London with the Chinese Foreign Minister, Yang Jiechi, whose country was reticent about new sanctions even before the publication of the National Intelligence Estimate on Iran. A Foreign Office spokesman said the US, Britain, France and Germany were also "working the phones" with Russian and Chinese officials on the text of a draft resolution they hope to submit to the UN Security Council next week.

"These countries understand that the Iranian nuclear issue is a problem, and continues to be a problem and must be addressed," President George Bush said yesterday. But UN diplomats said the assessment would complicate the drive to secure Russian and Chinese agreement, after the Chinese ambassador to the UN said "things have changed".

Mr Yang told reporters: "We hope that the Iran nuclear issue will get resolved appropriately through peaceful and diplomatic means." But he would not be drawn on Chinese support for expanded sanctions. Mr Miliband said: "The origins of that sanctions resolution are in the defiance by Iran of the international community in respect of uranium enrichment. That defiance remains the case today."

The intelligence findings were hailed by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as a "declaration of victory" for Tehran. The Russian Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, said his country had not seen evidence that Iran was working on a bomb before 2003.