Iran remains fully committed to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) despite its objections to the deadline given to Tehran to prove it is not developing atomic weapons, Iranian vice president and atomic energy agency chief Gholamreza Aghazadeh said.
"Iran is fully committed to its NPT responsibilities not only because of its contractual obligation but also because of its religious and ethical considerations," Aghazadeh told a general conference in Vienna of the UN nuclear watching, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
His comments set the record straight after Ali Akbar Salehi, Iran's ambassador to the IAEA, had said in a press interview that Iran was reconsidering its cooperation with the UN watchdog and might even withdraw from the NPT.
Aghazadeh said Iran was trying "to find ways and means that would salvage" the safeguards process of the NPT, a treaty which demands that signatory nations like Iran do not develop nuclear weapons.
"We are studying the (IAEA) resolution carefully and will respond to it officially in a few days," he said.
But he stressed: "Our cooperation with the agency within the framework of the comprehensive safeguards shall continue as before."
He also said Iran would continue negotiating on a protocol to allow IAEA inspectors to make wider, surprise inspections of suspect sites.
The United States charges that Iran is secretly developing nuclear weapons but the Islamic Republic denies this.
Aghazadeh condemned the United States for using a "heavy-handed approach" to force through the deadline in a resolution at a meeting last Friday of the IAEA's 35-nation board of governors.
He said the US tactics were part of an "agenda" that "is conceived in escalating tension and chaos to divert attention from serious issues that deal with partisan politics in the United States."
"This is unilateralism at its worst . . . extreme unilateralism imposed under a multilateralist cloak," Aghazadeh said.
He said the resolution, which gave Iran some six weeks, until October 31, to answer all the IAEA's questions about Tehran's nuclear program, was "engineered in such a manner as to guarantee its non- or half-implementation," implying that Iran was being condemned in advance.
IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei had opened the conference here of the agency's 136 member states by re-stating on Iran that "it is essential and urgent that all outstanding issues, particularly those involving high enriched uranium, be brought to closure as soon as possible."
He said he was looking forward "to enhancing the cooperation with Iran in the next few weeks."
US Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham said in his comments to the conference that the international community needs to look at how states like North Korea made progress on developing nuclear weapons even while belonging to the NPT.
North Korea has "sent a worrisome message to other would-be proliferants," Abraham said.
He said the message was that "a state can be a member of the NPT, enjoy its benefits and still put in place the assets it needs to break out of the Treaty and pronounce itself a nuclear weapon state."
The IAEA had in February referred the issue of North Korea, which claims to have manufactured nuclear bombs, to the UN Security Council.
North Korea kicked IAEA inspectors out of the country in December and then announced it was withdrawing from the NPT.
Abraham said the deadline set on Iran "makes clear that the North Korean precedent is unacceptable."
But Aghazadeh alluded to the United States when he said people should be asking "which country takes . . . the blame of providing Israel with nuclear weapons and thus overlooking its NPT obligations on non-proliferation."
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