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Iran Rebuked for Resuming Nuclear Research

Posted on: Tuesday, 10 January 2006, 12:00 CST

By ALI AKBAR DAREINI

TEHRAN, Iran - Iran removed U.N. seals on uranium enrichment equipment and resumed nuclear research Tuesday, defying demands it maintain a two-year freeze on its nuclear program and sparking an outcry from the United States and Europe.

The International Atomic Energy Agency said Iran plans to enrich uranium as part of its experiments with the nuclear fuel cycle. An IAEA statement issued in Vienna, Austria, said Iran told the agency the scale of its enrichment work would be limited.

U.S. officials denounced Iran's move, calling it a step toward creating material for nuclear bombs. Germany's foreign minister raised doubts over the future of European-led negotiations on Iran's nuclear program, questioning whether there remains any basis for more talks.

Britain warned that the international community was "running out of patience" with Tehran, and Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said Iran had breached IAEA resolutions.

"There was no good reason why Iran should have taken this step if its intentions are truly peaceful and it wanted to resolve longstanding international concerns," Straw said.

The latest move came as Iran has been taking a more confrontational line with the West. Hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has angered Europe and the United States in recent months with anti-Israeli remarks, first calling for the Jewish state to be "wiped off the map" and then calling the Nazi Holocaust a "myth."

The United States accuses Iran of seeking to develop nuclear weapons, a charge denied by Iran, which contends its program aims only to produce energy. France, Germany and Britain have been leading long-troubled negotiations with Iran aimed at ensuring its program is peaceful.

The seals were removed Tuesday from equipment at the nuclear plant at Natanz, the center of Iran's uranium enrichment program.

However, Iran stressed it was not resuming enrichment, a key process that can produce either material for a nuclear weapon or fuel for a reactor. Instead, it said it was restarting research activities at the plant.

"What we resume is merely in the field of research, not more than that," the deputy head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, Mohammad Saeedi, told a news conference. "Production of nuclear fuel" - which would involve enrichment - "remains suspended," he said.

But the IAEA statement said uranium hexafluoride - a gaseous form of uranium - will "be fed into cascades" of centrifuges as part of Iran's activities.

Uranium hexafluoride gas is spun in centrifuges to separate out fissile isotopes in the process of enrichment that can produce low-level nuclear fuel or weapons-grade material.

Iranian nuclear workers removed the seals in the presence of IAEA inspectors, then researchers resumed their work, he said. Saeedi did not specify the equipment that had been unsealed, saying that was "a confidential issue between us and the IAEA."

IAEA spokeswoman Melissa Fleming confirmed the removal of the seals and said the agency's 35-nation board of governors would be informed later Tuesday about what the Iranians planned to do with the unsealed equipment.

Iran's decision to freeze some nuclear activities was voluntary, so the IAEA had no option but to remove the seals at Iran's request.

The move further erodes the suspension of nuclear activities that has been the centerpiece of Iran's negotiations with the West. Tehran agreed to the freeze in October 2003 as a confidence-building measure and to avoid being referred to the U.N. Security Council, where it could face possible sanctions.

In August, Iran removed seals at another nuclear plant outside the city of Isfahan and resumed uranium reprocessing - a step before enrichment in the nuclear fuel process. That move prompted Europe to break off its negotiations temporarily. The talks resumed in December, and the two sides had been due to hold a new round later this month.

French President Jacques Chirac on Tuesday warned Iran it would commit a serious mistake if it ignored the international community on its nuclear program.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Iran was sending "worrying signals" on the nuclear issue. Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said Tehran had "crossed lines which it knew would not remain without consequences." Steinmeier said he asked IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei to quickly evaluate the dangers of Iran's move.

In Vienna, the chief U.S. representative to the IAEA, Gregory L. Schulte, said that by cutting the seals, Iran had shown "its disdain for international concerns and its rejection of international diplomacy."

"The regime continues to choose confrontation over cooperation, a choice that deepens the isolation of Iran and harms the interests of the Iranian people. Iran is taking another deliberate step toward enrichment, which creates the material for nuclear bombs," Schulte said.

The West has long pushed for Iran to abandon uranium enrichment, which Tehran has refused to do, insisting it has a right to develop the entire nuclear fuel cycle. The Europeans have been pressing a compromise proposal under which Iran's enrichment activities would be conducted in Russia to ensure no material is diverted toward weapons.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Tuesday his country was "expressing concern" over Iran's resumption of research "in spite of the moratorium that was agreed between Iran and the European countries."

He said Russia - a longtime ally of Iran - was working to ensure that Tehran maintains its freeze on enriching uranium until talks can be held between Moscow and Tehran over the proposal to move enrichment to Russia.

The Russian Foreign Ministry said a moratorium on enrichment was "necessary for the resolution of the problems remaining over the Iranian nuclear program," the Interfax news agency reported.

Japan said the decision was "a matter of deep regret."

In September, the IAEA board of governors passed a resolution telling Iran to return to "full and sustained suspension of all enrichment-related activity" until questions had been answered about the scope of its nuclear program.

The resolution brought Iran to the verge of being referred to the U.N. Security Council.

However, ElBaradei repeatedly has said his agency's nearly three-year investigation of Iran's nuclear activities has turned up no conclusive evidence of nuclear weapons activities.

At the same time, he has also said the IAEA cannot give Iran a clean bill of health and has criticized the country for the delays and conflicting information provided to his inspectors.

Iran hid its activities for decades - and turned to the same black market Libya shopped from in assembling basic elements of its now-dismantled nuclear weapons program. At the same time, it separated plutonium and did other work that could be used to develop nuclear arms.

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Associated Press reporter George Jahn in Vienna, Austria, contributed to this report.

Source: Associated Press/AP Online

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