Iran to shun UN atomic watchdog if hit by sanctions

By Parisa Hafezi

TEHRAN (Reuters) – Iran said on Tuesday it would suspend
ties with the UN nuclear watchdog and speed up its atomic
program if it were hit by international sanctions.

“How are you going to prevent our activities by imposing
sanctions? If you impose sanctions, Iran will suspend its
relations with the agency (IAEA),” chief nuclear negotiator Ali
Larijani told a conference on nuclear issues in Tehran.

“Suspension means we will accelerate our activities.”

Larijani also said Iran “cannot be expected to act
transparently” if it was attacked militarily, a last-resort
option the United States has refused to rule out.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, visiting Greece,
said in response: “I suppose the Iranians can threaten but they
are deepening their own isolation.”

She told a news conference the world must take “credible
steps” to curb the Islamic Republic’s nuclear work and the UN
Security Council had to take action “in light of Iran’s
continued defiance of international norms.”

The verbal sparring preceded an influential report on Iran
that International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Mohamed
ElBaradei is to deliver to the Security Council on Friday.

“I think we are going to have take a next step,” Rice said.
“It seems logical that we should consider a Chapter 7
resolution under the Security Council’s mandate.”

A Chapter 7 resolution allows for sanctions or even
military action. The United States, Britain and France favor
sanctions unless Iran backs down very soon. The council’s other
veto-holders, Russia and China, oppose punitive measures.

France said it has provisionally scheduled May 2 for a
meeting of political directors of the council’s five permanent
members plus Germany to discuss the next moves on Iran.

The U.S. ambassador to the IAEA said he expected ElBaradei
to report that Iran had failed to use the 30 days it was
granted to comply with demands that it halt uranium enrichment.

“Given the announcement they made two weeks ago and given
the apparent failure to cooperate further with the IAEA, we can
only expect a negative report,” Gregory Schulte, told Reuters.

Iran said this month it had for the first time enriched
uranium to the level used to fuel nuclear power stations and
that its next goal was industrial-scale production.

In Vienna, a diplomat familiar with IAEA operations said
ElBaradei would “lay out the facts,” not pass judgment on Iran.

The UN nuclear watchdog has previously said it cannot yet
confirm Iran’s assertion that its atomic activities are purely
civilian. But it has found no hard proof of a secret military
program, which the West suspects Iran is pursuing.

The diplomat said Larijani’s threat to freeze ties with the
IAEA suggested Iran might quit the nuclear Non-Proliferation
Treaty. It has refused since February to answer questions about
or grant visits to sites where undeclared activity is
suspected.

“We don’t know what they mean. But relations are already
down to the minimum. It’s just basic safeguards,” the diplomat
said, referring to IAEA access to declared nuclear sites.

“The only meaningful thing they could do now is kick out
inspectors and withdraw from the NPT, as North Korea did.”

The diplomat said an Iranian delegation was tentatively
expected to visit the IAEA in the next two days and might
provide some last-minute information before the report.

A European diplomat said ElBaradei’s report was likely to
“add grist to the U.S. mill” on Iran.

CLANDESTINE PROGRAMME?

Schulte said Iran was refusing to answer IAEA questions
about advanced P-2 centrifuges, designs of which it received
from a nuclear black market run by disgraced Pakistani nuclear
engineer Abdul Qadeer Khan.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad disclosed this month that
Iran was “presently conducting research” on P-2s, which can
enrich uranium faster than the P-1 model the Iranians now
operate.

Schulte said Ahmadinejad’s comments had fueled suspicions
Iran may have hidden P-2 activities from the IAEA.

He said the IAEA also wanted Iran to answer queries on
other issues such as documents it received from the Khan
network related to the production of the core of an atom bomb;
experiments with high explosives; and alleged administrative
links between its atomic program and the Iranian military.

Iran has repeatedly rejected demands to restrain its
nuclear activities, such as a freeze on enrichment.

“Iran’s nuclear technology is like a bullet that has
already left the barrel and it is impossible to push it back
into the barrel,” influential former Iranian President Akbar
Hashemi Rafsanjani told the Tehran conference.

French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy said there
should be no talk of unilateral military action.

China urged restraint and a peaceful solution, in comments
echoed by visiting Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov.

“Both Russia and China favor political, diplomatic
measures. We do not see an alternative to the negotiation
process,” Interfax news agency quoted him as saying in Beijing.

(Additional reporting by Louis Charbonneau in Berlin, Mark
Heinrich in Vienna, Jon Boyle in Paris, Madeline Chambers in
London and Chris Buckley in Beijing)