Iran rejects demands to abandon enrichment

By Christian Oliver

TEHRAN (Reuters) – Iran on Saturday refused to stop uranium
enrichment after a U.N. report said it had done little or
nothing to prove it was not developing nuclear weapons.

Instead, it repeated a long-standing offer to let
international inspectors make unannounced checks as long as the
U.N. Security Council — invoked by the West several months ago
to put pressure on Iran — dropped the case.

Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the U.N. International Atomic
Energy Agency (IAEA), delivered a report on Friday saying U.N.
checks in Iran had been hampered and Tehran had rebuffed
requests to stop making nuclear fuel.

Mohammad Saeedi, deputy head of Iran’s Atomic Energy
Organization, told state television that Iran wanted the
Security Council, which has the power to impose sanctions, to
pass the case back down to the IAEA.

“If the case returns to the agency (IAEA) again, we will
begin the section that concerns the Additional Protocol,”
Saeedi said.

The Additional Protocol to the nuclear Non-Proliferation
Treaty allows short-notice inspections of nuclear facilities.

“The enrichment will continue. But … we will continue
implementing the Additional Protocol as a voluntary measure,”
Saeedi added.

“If they change their decision and choose the wise path,
and the case returns to the IAEA, we believe we can solve all
the issues mentioned in ElBaradei’s eight-page report very
quickly.”

Iran insists that it is merely using its sovereign right to
enrich uranium at a low level to use as fuel in power stations
– and not aiming for the highly enriched form that could power
a warhead.

The major world powers say it must first prove, after years
of conducting illicit nuclear research in secret, that it is
not developing a nuclear bomb — and that it can only do this
by suspending all nuclear enrichment.

ElBaradei’s report said the IAEA was “unable to make
progress in its efforts to provide assurance about the absence
of undeclared nuclear material and activities in Iran.”

“The existing gaps in knowledge continue to be a matter of
concern,” it added. “Any progress in that regard requires full
transparency and active cooperation by Iran. These transparency
measures are not yet forthcoming.”

Western diplomats at the United Nations in New York have
said they plan to introduce a resolution to the Security
Council within a week giving legal force to the Council’s
demands.

The United States, backed by Britain and France, support
limited sanctions but the other two veto-wielding permanent
Council members, Russia and China, are more guarded.

The foreign ministers of the five permanent members will
meet, along with Germany, on May 9, the United States said on
Friday.

An EU diplomat in Vienna dismissed Saeedi’s suggestion of
returning to the situation that existed before Western powers
carried out their threat to go to the Security Council.

“The international community has made very clear what steps
Iran is required to take: they are a full suspension of all
enrichment-related activity and provision of transparency that
is overdue and essential,” he said.

But China’s ambassador to the United Nations, Wang Guangya,
told the official Xinhua News Agency in New York on Friday that
consideration of sanctions or military measures would not help
to resolve the issue.

He said the international community and the Security
Council must establish a “better means to defuse the current
crisis.”

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad reiterated that Iran would
never give up its right to peaceful atomic technology.

“That is our red line, and we will never cross it,” he said
in the northwestern city of Zanjan, according to state
television.

(Additional reporting by Alireza Ronaghi in Tehran and Mark
Heinrich in Vienna)