Iran ready to remove U.N. seals at nuclear sites

By Parisa Hafezi

TEHRAN (Reuters) – Iran confirmed it would resume research
on nuclear fuel on Monday, prompting swift warnings by Germany
of “consequences” and by the head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog
that the world was running out of patience with Tehran.

“Iran will today resume nuclear fuel research as
scheduled,” government spokesman Gholamhossein Elham told a
news conference on Monday morning.

Germany, France and Britain have been trying for over two
years to persuade Iran to abandon its uranium enrichment
program, which could be used to make atom bomb fuel. The EU and
the United States suspect Iran is trying to develop nuclear
weapons, a charge Iran strongly denies.

EU and U.S. officials have said a resumption of research
could lead to Tehran being referred to the U.N. Security
Council for possible sanctions.

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier told
reporters an Iranian resumption of research “cannot be left
without consequences. We will discuss it with our colleagues
from France and Great Britain … by Thursday at the latest.”

“It would be a breach of the agreements we reached in Paris
… ” he said, referring to the November 2004 accord in which
Iran agreed to freeze its enrichment program while in talks
with the EU trio.

International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Mohamed
ElBaradei added to the pressure on Iran to hold its hand.

“I am running out of patience, the international community
is running out of patience, the credibility of the verification
process is at stake and I’d like, come March, which is my next
report, to be able to clarify these issues,” he told Sky
Television in an interview to be broadcast on Monday.

“Everybody would like to see us clarifying the remaining
issues, everybody would like to see a regime by which the
international community is assured that the Iranian program is
exclusively for peaceful purposes and there are still a number
of issues we are looking at,” he said.

Austrian Foreign Minister Ursula Plassnik, whose country
holds the EU presidency, said Iran’s decision was “the wrong
step in the wrong direction and is a cause of very serious
concern.”

Iran insists its nuclear ambitions are entirely peaceful
and says it has the right to enrich uranium on its own soil.

“Iran will never abandon its legitimate right to nuclear
technology, obtained by the young Iranian scientists,” state
television quoted Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who
has the ultimate say on state matters, as saying.

The EU and the United States back a plan put forward by
Moscow for Iran to enrich uranium in Russia, which would ensure
the uranium was enriched only to levels where it could be used
to generate electricity and not to make nuclear bombs.

Talks between Russia and Iran on the proposal ended on
Sunday without any progress but are due to resume on February
16.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was due on Monday to hold his
first major news conference since taking office in August.

MISTRUST IN THE WEST

A staunch conservative, Ahmadinejad has resolutely refused
to renounce Iran’s right to uranium enrichment and has stirred
up more mistrust in the West by dismissing the Holocaust as “a
myth” and calling Israel a “tumor” to be “wiped off the earth.”

Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi told a news
conference on Sunday Iran would restart work when the IAEA, the
U.N. nuclear watchdog, was ready to supervise the removal of
seals it put in place two years ago to freeze activities while
talks went ahead.

The IAEA said two letters sent by Iran to explain its move
left key questions unresolved and the Vienna-based agency said
it had asked for more information. If Iran complies with the
IAEA requests, the restart of nuclear work could be delayed.

Iran has not publicly disclosed what activities it plans to
resume. Diplomats and analysts say atomic research and
development (R&D) could involve some laboratory tests of
uranium enrichment and assembly of centrifuge enrichment
machines.

That would mean all of Iran’s nuclear program was active
once again, apart from uranium enrichment at an unfinished
plant at Natanz.

Diplomats close to the IAEA said that if Iran went ahead
and restarted nuclear R&D it would prompt a report to the
IAEA’s 35-nation board of governors which would then decide
whether to call an emergency full meeting of all member
countries.

That meeting could decide whether to refer Iran to the U.N.
Security Council which could impose sanctions.

But Khamenei said Iran would survive any sanctions.

“The sanctions imposed on Iran have made Iranians rely on
their own capabilities,” the official IRNA news agency quoted
Khamenei as saying. “So, sanctions will have no impact on
Iran.”