A senior Iranian security official on Thursday accused the International Atomic Energy Authority of lying and leaking information from inspections of Iran's nuclear facilities. Speaking on Iranian television, the normally mild Hossein Mousavian, foreign policy head of the Supreme National Security Council, also warned Britain, France and Germany that Iran would leave talks with them about its nuclear programme unless there was "tangible progress". | "Bow down and kiss our feet, infidels!" |
Mohamed ElBaradei, IAEA director general, told the agency's board this week that Iran should go out of its way to be transparent about its nuclear programme, which Tehran says is peaceful, to overcome suspicions arising from the fact that it had been kept secret for almost two decades.
Jackie Sanders, chief US delegate, said Tehran was "cynically" pursuing nuclear weapons and called for United Nations security council referral. President George W Bush was on Thursday talking with his national security team about whether to shift policy and to join Europe in offering inducements to Iran to end uranium enrichment. But his warning in Europe last month that all options were open for dealing with Tehran has fed speculation that the US or Israel would attack Iran's nuclear sites.
Mr Mousavian on Thursday accused the IAEA of leaking information to the media from inspections during the past year: "The basic shortcoming of the IAEA is that it has not been able to keep Iran's secrets." On Wednesday, Sirus Naseri, Iran's chief nuclear negotiator, said its worries about "confidentiality of information" were "more intense in view of potential threats of military strikes against facilities visited by [the agency]". | You can inspect but you can't tell anybody |
Mr Mousavian's outburst on Thursday centred on a statement this week by Pierre Goldschmidt, IAEA deputy director general. Mr Goldschmidt said Iran allowed the IAEA partial access to a military site but had denied a request for another visit. Mr Mousavian said Iran had agreed to one inspection of Parchin, an explosives-testing centre south-east of Tehran, even though this was "not within the country's duties" under the Non-Proliferation Treaty. "Iran agreed to allow inspection of one place chosen by the IAEA," he said. "When Mr Goldschmidt announced they had wanted to do more inspections and Iran refused, this was a sheer lie."
European incentives for Iran to moderate its nuclear activities such as the sale of parts for civilian aircraft and talks about joining the World Trade Organisation have publicly received short shrift in Tehran.
"The people would never want to join the global trade body at the cost of giving up our nuclear programme," said an editorial on Thursday in the moderate Iran Daily. Attacks on the IAEA have hitherto come from hardliners rather than the pragmatic conservatives handling nuclear negotiations.| Looks like Bush's policy of letting the Europeans take the lead in this is going as planned. |
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