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Iran Ordered to Dispel Nuke Doubts 'In Months'

June 14, 2004
Reuters
Louis Charbonneau and Mark Trevelyan

VIENNA -- Iran is not fully cooperating with U.N. inspectors and must provide full answers within months on the extent of its nuclear programme, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency says.

Mohamed ElBaradei said the process of clarifying unresolved issues -- particularly over Iran's uranium enrichment activities -- could not be allowed to drag on for ever.

"It is essential for the integrity and credibility of the inspection process that we are able to bring these issues to a close within the next few months, and provide the international community with the assurances it urgently seeks regarding Iran's nuclear activities," he told the IAEA's board of governors on Monday.

The United States has long accused Iran of trying to build a nuclear weapon under cover of a civilian atomic energy programme. Tehran denies this, insisting it is only interested in generating electricity.

Diplomats said the United States would be pushing at the IAEA board meeting in Vienna, expected to last at least several days, for the agency to set Iran a deadline to cooperate fully.

ElBaradei said any deadline would be a matter for the member states to decide, but his comments made clear that Iran had to stop delaying and changing its story.

"We still have a central issue, and that is whether Iran has declared all its (uranium) enrichment activities," ElBaradei said, demanding "accelerated and proactive cooperation".

He highlighted concerns over the detection of traces of low-enriched and highly-enriched uranium at sites in Iran, and over Tehran's work with advanced P2 centrifuges.

These are used in the process of enriching, or purifying, uranium for use in an atomic reactor or in a nuclear weapon.

Information provided by Tehran on its P2 programme had been "changing and at times contradictory", ElBaradei said.

IRAN TO REJECT 'EXTREME DEMANDS'

Iran wants the IAEA to give it credit for the information it has disclosed to date, and has said failure to give it due recognition will affect future cooperation.

Iran's senior delegate Hossein Mousavian told reporters his country was providing "full cooperation", supplying all the information requested, and narrowing down the range of outstanding issues.

In Tehran, newly elected hardline lawmakers threatened not to ratify a U.N. protocol allowing snap nuclear inspections, which Iran signed last year and has so far been implementing.

"If Western governments impose extreme demands, the parliament will not sign the protocol," parliamentarian Mohammad Reza Tajeddini said in a newspaper article.

Delegates at the Vienna meeting will consider a joint draft resolution from France, Germany and Britain that "deplores" Iran's lack of full cooperation with the U.N. nuclear watchdog. But diplomats said Washington wanted to go further.

"The Americans want a deadline," a diplomat from one of the 35 nations on the IAEA board told Reuters. "A deadline would be to keep the pressure on Iran."

Another diplomat said a deadline could be used to force Iran to finally keep some of the promises it made to the Europeans in October 2003, when Tehran agreed to suspend uranium enrichment activities in exchange for peaceful atomic technology.

Washington would also like a "trigger mechanism" that would call for the board to report Iran to the U.N. Security Council for possible sanctions if its cooperation remains sluggish.

U.S. ambassador Kenneth Brill, commenting on ElBaradei's remarks, said: "It was a firm message that Iran has to do much better than it has been doing."

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