West angry as Iran resumes nuclear research

By Parisa Hafezi

TEHRAN (Reuters) – Iran removed U.N. seals at its uranium
enrichment plant and resumed nuclear fuel research on Tuesday,
drawing sharp criticism from the West which fears its nuclear
program could be used to make bombs.

The U.N. nuclear watchdog, the IAEA, said the research
would involve the small-scale enrichment of uranium, useable in
power plants or weapons.

The United States and European Union powers warned Iran it
risked referral to the U.N. Security Council for possible
sanctions. Russia, Iran’s nuclear energy partner, also
criticized the move.

Washington said if Tehran began uranium enrichment it would
be a “serious escalation” of its dispute with the West.

“Iran’s nuclear research centers have restarted their
activities,” Mohammad Saeedi, deputy head of Iran’s Atomic
Energy Organization, told state television. He denied Iran
intended to produce nuclear fuel.

“There is a difference between research and producing
nuclear fuel … The production of nuclear fuel is still under
suspension,” he told a news conference.

British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said he was consulting
EU colleagues on how hard to push for a Security Council
referral. He said if Tehran showed an intention to develop a
nuclear facility, it risked bringing instability to the Middle
East region.

But Straw stressed the dispute with Iran had to be resolved
by diplomatic means. “Military action is not on our agenda, I
don’t believe in practice it is on anyone else’s agenda,” he
told parliament.

RUSSIAN CRITICISM

Russia, which is helping to build a nuclear power station
at the southern Iranian port of Bushehr, also criticized the
move.

“The latest information that Iran has announced its
intention in the near future to restart work connected with the
enrichment of uranium provokes concern,” Russian news agencies
quoted Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov as saying.

He noted the move was “despite a moratorium which was
agreed between Iran and European countries and despite the fact
that this agreement was registered with the International
Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).”

“The IAEA’s board sees such a moratorium as essential for
the resolution of remaining questions on Iran’s nuclear
program,” the foreign ministry said in a statement.

Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the IAEA, told its 35-nation
governing board that Iran intended to carry out limited uranium
enrichment at its Natanz facility, where it broke U.N. seals as
IAEA inspectors watched.

“Iran plans to install a small-scale gas ultracentrifuge
cascade in its pilot fuel enrichment plant at Natanz,” a
Western diplomat said, reading from ElBaradei’s report.

The IAEA said the research would involve feeding uranium
hexafluoride gas into the centrifuges. These machines can
purify uranium gas to a low level for nuclear power plant fuel
or to a higher level for weapons.

Straw said he would meet his French and German counterparts
and EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana in Berlin on
Thursday.

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said the EU
trio, which has negotiated with Iran on the nuclear issue,
would decide whether there was now any basis for further talks.

French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy said: “We
call on Iran to reverse this decision without delay and
unconditionally.”

European diplomats have said they would seek an emergency
IAEA meeting to consider referring Tehran to the U.N. Security
Council. The United States said this now looked inevitable.

“If the regime in Iran continues on the current course and
fails to abide by its international obligations, there is no
other choice but to refer the matter to the Security Council,”
White House spokesman Scott McClellan said.

Tehran denies wanting nuclear technology for anything but a
civilian energy program aimed at satisfying the Islamic
Republic’s booming demand for electricity.

Western powers had called on Iran to refrain from any work
that could help it develop atomic weapons. The EU said Iran’s
latest action was “eroding international confidence in the
peaceful nature of its nuclear program.”

Several diplomats said the IAEA board had received a full
report on Iran’s breaking of IAEA seals at three nuclear
facilities that had been mothballed under a November 2004 deal
with Britain, France and Germany.

Although the scale of the centrifuge research would be
small, diplomats say it could enable Iran to master the art of
enriching uranium so that it could make bombs in the future.

Saeedi said the IAEA would monitor work at the research
facilities, including Natanz, an underground plant in central
Iran that Tehran concealed from U.N. inspectors until an
Iranian exile group revealed its existence in August 2002.

(Additional reporting by Louis Charbonneau in Berlin, Mark
John in Brussels, Mark Heinrich and Madeline Chambers in
London, Kerstin Gehmlich in Paris, Guy Faulconbridge in Moscow
and Guo Shipeng in Beijing)