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IAEA Admits to Omission in Report on Iran

RadioFarda

Thursday, June 17, 2004

•The UN International Atomic Energy Agency acknowledged that it had inadvertently omitted to note that one of its inspectors had been informed by an Iranian official about the purchase of 150 magnets for uranium enrichment equipment. But IAEA chief said Iran actually had asked a black market supplier about the possibility of buying 100,000 magnets. “How ould that square with an R and D program?” he asked. The omission was due to unintelligible English accent of the Iranian official being interviewed, ElBaradei said. “The mistake does not change the fact that Iran has been providing contradictory information on its nuclear program,” US envoy to IAEA Kenneth Brill said. Following the acknowledgment of the error, it was unlikely that a draft resolution would be submitted to the 35-nation agency's board of governors before Friday. Iran's envoy to IAEA Hossein Mousavian played a tape of the interview to discredit IAEA's report as “politically motivated.”

•The resolution drafted by Europe's big three and fine tuned after consultation with the US, “would undermine relations between Iran and IAEA,” head of Iran's delegation to IAEA Hossein Mousavian said in Vienna, following the release of the full text of the resolution on the second day of the meeting of UN International Atomic Energy Agency's board of governors. Representatives from Iran spent the day scrambling to delete a provision calling for the cancellation of Tehran's plans to build a heavy-water research reactor and to start operations at a uranium conversion plant, news agencies reported.

•“With the ongoing trend, we have no moral commitment any more to suspend uranium enrichment,” President, Mohammad Khatami said today in Tehran. His tough words deepened the rift between Iran and IAEA, as the agency's governing board was preparing a resolution that “deplores” Tehran's less-than-full cooperation. If the draft resolution is adopted by the IAEA board of governors, Iran will not allow any more inspections of its nuclear sites, Khatami added.

•“Khatami's warning was only one of several issued by senior Iranian officials this week, signaling Iranian impatience with the inspections, the Washington Post writes. “While Khatami is considered a moderate in the Iranian government, on Tuesday the hard-line speaker of Iran's parliament suggested the assembly might decline to ratify an additional protocol to the treaty that would allow inspections on two hours' notice,” it added.

http://www.radiofarda.com/transcripts/topstory/2004/06/20040617_1530_0040_0442_EN.asp