ElBaradei: Iran Was Shopping on Nuclear Black Mkt
Reuters
Friday, August 29, 2003; 2:50 AM
VIENNA (Reuters) - The head of the United Nations nuclear watchdog said in comments aired on Friday that Iran had shopped for nuclear components on the international black market and called on Tehran to be more "proactive" and "transparent."
In an interview on the BBC television program Hardtalk, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Mohamed ElBaradei also said that Iran's nuclear program had been going on far longer than the agency had realized.
Although he was not certain of the countries that made the equipment Iran had acquired on the black market, ElBaradei said he had a "pretty good idea" which ones they were.
"It could be one country, it could be more than one country," ElBaradei said. "They (Iran) told us they have got a lot of that stuff from the black market. It is through intermediaries. It is not directly from the country."
Media reports have named Pakistan, a nuclear weapons state that has refused to sign the nuclear 1968 Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), as one of countries whose nuclear technology Iran is believed to be using.
Although he stopped short of accusing Tehran of lying to the U.N. agency, ElBaradei said Iran had failed to give the IAEA a complete picture of its nuclear program, which Washington says is merely a front for a secret atomic weapons program.
"They have not really been fully transparent in telling us in advance what was going on," ElBaradei said in the interview, recorded on Thursday and aired on Friday.
Asked if he believed Iran was running a secret weapons program, ElBaradei said: "It might be, it might not be."
"I need to really get the Iranians to tell me the full, complete story," he said. "And I would like Iran to be more proactive, more transparent."
He said that it would have been much easier to verify Iran's insistence its nuclear program is peaceful if it had given the IAEA a complete picture of its atomic plans from the beginning.
"It would have been easier for us to complete our job if we knew what was going on as early as the mid 1980s," ElBaradei said. "Now we have to go... 20 years back."
He repeated his call for Iran to quickly sign a protocol giving the IAEA the right to carry out intrusive, short notice inspections across the country.
"The international community's getting very concerned, very impatient," ElBaradei said about the situation in Iran.
He also agreed that countries such as Iran, pre-war Iraq and North Korea -- what President Bush has branded the "axis of evil" -- have had a history of misleading the world about their nuclear programs.
"They have been giving the international community the runaround," he said.
The IAEA Board of Governors meets next month to discuss the agency's recent inspections in Iran. The United States is pushing the board to declare Tehran in violation of its NPT nuclear safeguards obligations and report it to the U.N. Security Council, which can impose economic sanctions.
Iran's Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi said on Thursday the Islamic Republic was ready to start talks on allowing snap U.N. inspections of its nuclear sites.
"We have written to the director-general (of the International Atomic Energy Agency) saying we are ready to start negotiations on the Additional Protocol," Kharrazi told CNN.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A62712-2003Aug29.html