Iran Fooled UN Inspectors With Decoy Site
November 19, 2003
Reuters AlertNet
Reuters
VIENNA -- Iran continues to deceive the U.N. nuclear watchdog and even took the agency's inspectors to a decoy site to prevent them from uncovering an undeclared nuclear workshop, an exiled Iranian opposition group said on Wednesday.
This allegation comes a day before the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency's (IAEA) Board of Governors meets to discuss an IAEA report on Iran's 18-year concealment of the full extent of its nuclear programme from the U.N. body.
The United States accuses Iran of secretly developing nuclear weapons, a charge Tehran vehemently denies. Iran says it has opened its nuclear programme completely and has no secrets.
Firouz Mahvi, a member of the foreign relations committee of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) told a news conference IAEA experts went to inspect an alleged nuclear site in Hashtgerd, near Karaj, but were taken to a similar site.
"Information from within the clerical regime made it clear that they had been taken to a site similar to the site in question and they were not shown the actual site. This is one example of the clerical regime's deceptive tactics," he said.
IAEA officials were not immediately available for comment.
In August 2002, the NCRI sparked the crisis surrounding Iran's nuclear programme by revealing an underground uranium-enrichment plant at Natanz and a heavy-water production facility at Arak both of which Iran later declared to the IAEA.
The NCRI sees itself as a potential replacement for Islamic rule in Iran, but has little popular support inside the country. The U.S. State Department lists the NCRI and its armed wing, the People's Mujahideen, as a terrorist organisation.
Mahvi said Iran was still lying to the U.N. and that its cooperation was a ruse that would eventually be ended.
"They (the Iranian government) want to buy time and cooperate as much as possible to get to the 'point of no return'," Mahvi said, adding that the point of no return was the moment Iran could not be prevented from making an atom bomb.
He said that the NCRI believed this point would be reached in several months to two years. Washington believes it would take Iran until the latter part of this decade.
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