IRAN SETS CONDITIONS FOR SIGNING THE NPT PROTOCOLS
TEHRAN 29 Sept. (IPS)
Iran confirmed indirectly that it is determined to continue its program for enriching uranium despite urgent and categorical demand by the United Nations nuclear watchdog to stop it before the end of October.
In an interview with the American television network ABC, Iranian Foreign Affairs Minister Kamal Kharrazi said the Islamic Republic would sign the Additional Protocols to the Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT) "provided it is assured that it can continue enriching uranium for its nuclear-powered electricity plants" and also be provided with modern atomic technology for peaceful purposes.
Though Mr. Kharrazi has reiterated and repeated that all its atomic projects are for civilian use, but experts, both Iranian and foreign say Iran is after the nuclear bomb, hence its insistence for enriching uranium.
"What the decision-makers are after is to buy as much time as they need for building the atomic bomb or to get close to it", Mr. Qasem Sho’leh Sa’di, a prominent Iranian political dissident and respected lawyer and university professor told the Persian service of the Radio France International in an interview last week.
Last week, President Mohammad Khatami had made it plain that iran wants the nuclear technology to make itself strong miliatrilly.
The conditions put by Mr. Kharrazi for signing the Protocols are difficult to understand since the enriched uranium needed for Iran’s first atomic-powered electrical plant, which is under construction in the Persian Gulf of Boosher, would be provided by Russia, the country that is building the 1000 megawatts, 800 millions US Dollars station.
Last week, diplomats at the Vienna-based International Atomic energy Agency (IAEA) disclosed that experts from the Agency had discovered new uranium-contaminated materials at a new site near the Capital Tehran, the Kalaye Electric factory operated by the government.
This is the second plant where Iran is enriching uranium. The first one is located near the central city of Natanz, built several years ago secretly, without being reported to the IAEA.
According to Mr Ali Akbar Salehi, Iran’s Ambassador at the IAEA, Iran is already producing enriched uranium with some 163 centrifuges it has purchased many years ago when it was not compulsory to report them to the Agency.
He also said that the finds were due contamination from parts it had imported. "Iran would have needed large numbers of centrifuges operating for a long period of time to produce the level of uranium enrichment found", Mr. Salehi explained last week, adding that both the IAEA and we know that such a thing does not exist (in Iran).
The signing of the additional Protocols is opposed by the ruling Iranian ayatollahs, as it allows inspectors to visit Iranian nuclear sites at will, without any preconditions or restrictions, a condition that hard liners in the Iranian clerical establishment compare to an "unconditional surrender" to the Americans.
In repeated articles, conservatives-controlled newspapers urges the government of the embattled and powerless Mohammad Khatami to leave the NPT and follow the path adopted by the communist regime of North Korea, the Islamic Republic’s main supplier of technologies for making missiles and atomic weapons, alongside with Pakistan, the first Muslim nation to possess the A-bomb.
"It is naive to think that after accepting the protocol (on snap inspections) America, the European Union and America's allies will stop accusing Iran", the independent Iranian Students News Agency ISNA quoted Mr. Hoseyn Shari’atmadari, a high-ranking intelligence officer specialising in interrogating intellectuals and political dissidents appointed by Ayatollah Ali Khameneh'i as editor of the hard line "Kayhan" newspaper.
"Signing or rejecting the Protocols lead the Iranians to the same dead end road", Mr. Sho’leh Sa’di told the RFI, explaining that by signing, they would give international experts unrestricted access to all Iranian atomic-related sites, but if they refuse, they would expose the country to sanctions by the UN’s Security Council.
On 12 September, the IAEA’s Board of Governors gave Iran until the end of October to sign the Protocols and stop all its uranium enriching programs or the matter would be transferred to the Security Council for decision, including imposing economic sanctions on Iran.
Iranian government’s official spokesman Abdollah Ramezanzadeh said on Monday that negotiations on Iran’s nuclear program will get underway on Thursday after the arrival of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors.
The experts were due in Iran on Sunday, but Tehran had demanded a short delay to "prepare itself", as officials are not able to decide what to do with the Protocols.
Commenting that all nations, including Iranians, are entitled to peaceful application of nuclear energy, he said that no compromise could be made on such matters. "Iran will not give in to any restriction to the peaceful application of atomic energy", he reiterated, according to the official news agency IRNA.
In reply to the question whether the IAEA inspection trend will be conditional, he said, "We have so far fully complied with our commitments towards the IAEA and continuation of cooperation will depend on the outcome of negotiations", IRNA added. ENDS IAEA IRAN URANIUM 29903
http://www.iran-press-service.com/articles_2003/Sept-2003/iaea_iran_uranium_29903.htm