Iran Given 'Last Chance' Over Nuclear Inspections
September 09, 2003
The Telegraph
telegraph.co.uk
The United States has given Iran a "last chance" to prove to the United Nations that it is not developing nuclear weapons.
America has backed a draft resolution submitted to the International Atomic Energy Agency by Britain, France and Germany that gives Iran until the end of October to allow the UN to inspect its nuclear programmes.
Washington had earlier tried to persuade the IAEA to rule that Iran has already broken the non-proliferation treaty it signed in 1970, sparking the possibility of the UN Security Council imposing sanctions on Tehran.
Kenneth Brill, the US ambassador to the UN in Vienna, told the IAEA's governing board that there was enough evidence to "fully justify an immediate finding of non-compliance by Iran".
But he said America had agreed to give Iran, which President Bush included in his "axis of evil" with North Korea and Saddam Hussein's Iraq, a "last chance to stop its evasions".
The draft resolution, which must be passed by the IAEA 35-nation board, says that it is "essential and urgent" that Iran must "remedy all failures identified by the agency".
It was put forward after American diplomats criticised a report published earlier this week by Mohamed ElBaradei, the IAEA's director, for being too soft on Iran.
Ali Akbar Salehi, Iran's ambassador to the IAEA, told reporters that Tehran has no secret weapons programme and had gone "beyond our obligations" with the UN inspectors.
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