Iran 'has nuclear bomb project'
Atomic energy inspectors' findings stoke suspicion and put Tehran at top of agenda
Ian Traynor in Zagreb and Dan Deluce in Tehran
Monday September 8, 2003
The Guardian
UN inspectors have concluded that Iran has used nuclear materials to test uranium enrichment machinery despite Tehran's repeated declarations to the contrary and its obligations to report such practices to the UN.
The conclusions reached by inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency during visits to Iran in June and last month fuel suspicions that Iran is far advanced in a clandestine nuclear bomb project.
The Bush administration, which classified Iran as part of the "axis of evil" troika of rogue states bent on acquiring nuclear weapons, believes the latest findings from the IAEA in Vienna confirm its conviction that Tehran is well on its way to acquiring the bomb and should be sanctioned by the UN security council.
The IAEA findings "demonstrate that Iran has been lying," said a senior western diplomat closely involved in monitoring the Iranian nuclear programme.
A meeting of the 35-strong IAEA board opening today in Vienna will be dominated by the Iranian dilemma following a confidential 10-page report on Iran by the agency's chief, Mohamed ElBaradei, which points to the need for urgent answers about Iran's uranium enrichment programme, the process by which low-grade fuel used to generate nuclear power is turned into weapons-grade uranium.
The meeting will adopt a resolution calling on Iran to open its doors to the nuclear inspectors unconditionally. But Washington has backed down from demanding that Iran be declared in breach of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, a move that could trigger sweeping international sanctions against Iran.
"To maintain broad support for the agency, it has been agreed to support a resolution that stops short of declaring Iran in non-compliance" with the non-proliferation treaty, said the western diplomat.
At the last such meeting in June, Washington could not muster the support for reporting Iran to the security council. A similar scenario is unfolding this time despite the greater and broader unease about the alleged bomb project. Malaysia has come under pressure from Washington as head of the non-aligned states but has refused to support a resolution that would shift the issue to the UN security council. Japan has also come under US lobbying to cancel a lucrative oil deal under negotiation unless Iran allows more intrusive inspections.
In the run-up to the meeting, Tehran is appearing more conciliatory. The foreign minister, Kamal Kharrazi, reiterated his government's positive but vague position at the weekend.
"With explanations and the removal of ambiguities from the IAEA, Iran will in the near future sign the additional protocol" enabling snap UN inspections, he told the state news agency.
Some diplomats and analysts in Tehran say Iran is playing for time to secure concessions or to complete work on its alleged weapons programme. UN inspectors and the US administration have a tense relationship because of the Iraq war. But while US hawks are heading the campaign of pressure against Iran, the nuclear inspectors, too, are increasingly alarmed at the scale and the sophistication of what they are gradually uncovering in Iran.
The Iranians insist their nuclear ambitions are restricted to power generation. But at the weekend they again balked at Russian insistence on an agreement to return nuclear fuel being supplied for the Bushehr nuclear power station in the south of the country.
If the Iranians keep the spent fuel and reprocess it, they obtain weapons-grade plutonium.
Inconsistencies feeding fears of an Iranian nuclear bomb revolve around these areas:
· The Natanz underground uranium enrichment project in central Iran. The Iranians have constructed thousands of centrifuges for a pilot uranium enrichment programme there.
· The Kalaye Electric Company in Tehran has played a key role in the Iranian project. When UN inspectors went there last March, they were prevented by the Iranians from taking any environmental samples.
· At Arak, the Iranians are designing a heavy water plant which produces weapons-grade plutonium but is irrelevant to the Bushehr nuclear station, which is to use a light water reactor.
· Uranium metal: the Iranians have also been found to be converting uranium into uranium metal and have constructed a "uranium metal purification and casting laboratory".
http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,1037453,00.html