A draft of what would be the third resolution by the U.N. atomic watchdog's board on the war in Ukraine again calls on Russia to cease all actions against Ukraine's nuclear facilities including Zaporizhzhia, the text seen by Reuters on Monday showed.
The wording of the draft resolution circulated by Canada to other countries on the International Atomic Energy Agency's 35-nation Board of Governors is similar to that of the two previous resolutions passed by the board in March and September, which also deplored Russia's actions in Ukraine.
The first resolution focused on Russia's occupation of radioactive waste facilities at Chernobyl, the site of the world's worst nuclear accident in 1986. The day after that resolution was passed, Russia seized the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, Europe's largest.
"(The board) calls upon the Russian Federation to abandon its baseless claims of ownership of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, to immediately withdraw its military and other personnel from the plant, and to cease all actions against, and at, the plant and any other nuclear facility in Ukraine," said the text circulated ahead of a board meeting later this week.
The previous resolutions were passed with large majorities, with only Russia and China opposing them. The quarterly board meeting starts on Wednesday.
The IAEA has been calling for a protection zone around Zaporizhzhia to reduce the risk of a catastrophic accident. Shelling has damaged buildings and cut power lines essential to cooling reactor fuel and avoiding a nuclear meltdown. Russia and Ukraine blame each other for the shelling.
(Reporting by Francois Murphy; editing by John Irish and Jon Boyle)
