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U.N. Nuclear Agency Says Iran's Stonewalling on Weapons Program

Posted on: Monday, 27 February 2006, 21:00 CST

VIENNA, Austria _ Iran is defying international demands to halt uranium enrichment and divulge all aspects of its nuclear program, including whether its military was involved in what may have been nuclear warhead-design work, a U.N. nuclear agency report Monday says.

Unless Iran cooperates, U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency investigators may never be able to determine whether its program is strictly for peaceful purposes, as it claims, the report says.

"Although the Agency has not seen any diversion of nuclear material to nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices, the Agency is not at this point in time in a position to conclude that there are no undeclared nuclear materials or activities in Iran," says the report, by IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei.

The report was certain to bolster the United States and its European allies in their drive to have the U.N. Security Council step up pressure on Iran to halt its uranium enrichment work and accept restraints that guarantee that it can't develop nuclear weapons.

Enrichment is the process that produces low-enriched uranium for power plants and highly enriched uranium for nuclear bombs.

ElBaradei delivered the confidential report to the 35 nations that sit on the IAEA board of governors before a meeting March 6. Knight Ridder obtained a copy.

The board voted Feb. 4 to report Tehran to the Security Council, which has the power to impose sanctions. But it agreed at the insistence of Russia and China, which have major commercial and political ties with Iran, to allow a month for diplomatic efforts to resolve the crisis.

Talks between Russia and Iran over the weekend appeared to make no major progress on a proposal to have Russia host a joint venture that would produce low-enriched uranium for Iranian power plants.

State Department spokesman Adam Ereli said in Washington that he wasn't aware of any deal.

Iran says it has the right to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes under the Non-Proliferation Treaty, the cornerstone safeguard of the global system designed to halt the spread of nuclear weapons.

Tehran admits that it hid its program from the IAEA for 18 years, including technology and know-how purchased from a Pakistani-led international smuggling ring.

ElBaradei's 11-page report offered no evidence substantiating U.S. and European charges that Iran's program is a cover for a military-run nuclear weapons project. But it calls "regrettable, and a matter of concern, that ... uncertainties related to the scope and nature of Iran's nuclear program have not been clarified" after three years of investigation.

Of greatest concern, the report says, is the "inadequacy" of information on Iran's work with centrifuges, devices that spin uranium hexafluoride gas into enriched uranium. Another top concern was a document purchased from the smuggling ring outlining procedures for machining uranium metal into the explosive spherical core of a nuclear warhead.

It says Iran also has failed to clarify "the role of the military in Iran's nuclear program, including ... information available to the Agency concerning alleged weapons studies that could involve nuclear material."

The report is referring to intelligence provided to the IAEA by the United States that came from a laptop computer obtained by the CIA.

The intelligence concerned what's known as the "Green Salt Project," which allegedly involves research into enriching uranium by a process other than the one that Iran claims it's pursuing.

It also dealt with "tests related to high explosives," which are used to detonate the highly enriched uranium cores of nuclear bombs, and "the design of a missile re-entry vehicle," the report says.

The same officials appeared to be involved in all three efforts, it says.

Iranian officials called the laptop information baseless and denied the existence of the project at meetings with IAEA officials in January and February, according to the report.

It says IAEA officials are waiting for more information from Iran on the matter and "other topics which could have a military nuclear dimension."

The United States, the European Union, Russia and China, along with other nations, have demanded that Iran reimpose a more than two-year suspension on uranium enrichment work that it ended in January. Iran is defying the demand, according to the report.

It started tests earlier this month by feeding uranium hexafluoride gas into a single centrifuge and then a 10-centrifuge system at its key research facility in Natanz, in central Iran.

Iranian experts are preparing to test a 20-centrifuge system, and they plan to install the first 3,000 machines of an industrial-scale plant at Natanz in the fourth quarter of this year, the report says.

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(Schofield reported from Vienna, Landay from Washington.)

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(c) 2006, Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.

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PHOTO (from KRT Photo Service, 202-383-6099): IRAN-NUCLEAR

For information on republishing this content, contact us at (800) 661-2511 (U.S.), (213) 237-4914 (worldwide), fax (213) 237-6515, or e-mail reprints@krtinfo.com. 1027494

Source: Knight Ridder Washington Bureau

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