| Submit your comments on this article |
| Syria-Lebanon-Iran |
| Iran Offers Look at Uranium Program |
| 2006-11-23 |
| Iran has agreed to crack open the books on its uranium enrichment activities, the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency said Thursday - a move that could give experts a better grasp of a program the Security Council fears could be misused to produce atomic bombs. The concession appeared timed in hopes of heading off a rejection by the International Atomic Energy Agency of Iran's request for technical help in building its Arak plutonium-producing reactor. Unmoved, the IAEA's 35-nation board denied the aid for at least two years. Tehran's decision to provide access to the operating records of its pilot uranium enrichment plant at Natanz came with another carrot - a pledge to allow U.N. inspectors to take more samples from a facility that had yielded suspicious traces of enriched uranium. Both moves were described as "important steps" by IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei, who announced Tehran's offer. Uranium enrichment and plutonium reprocessing can both produce material for atomic warheads, and Iran's lack of complete candor about its programs has fed suspicions in Washington and other capitals that Tehran is trying to make nuclear weapons in violation of its treaty obligations. Iran insists its only goal is to use enrichment to produce fuel for nuclear reactors that generate electricity and plutonium reprocessing to make nuclear isotopes for medical treatments. Responding to Iran's defiance of demands that it curb its nuclear program until suspicions are allayed, the IAEA board decided to put off a ruling on the request for technical help on the Arak reactor. That denied IAEA help for at least two years, after which Tehran can submit a new request. The board's voted to approve all requests for IAEA technical aid "with the exception of" Arak, wording that allowed both the United States and Iran to claim victory. Gregory L. Schulte, the chief U.S. delegate to the IAEA, said Arak was "removed entirely from the program, not just deferred." "The U.S. and the IAEA are not prepared to help countries build nuclear bombs," he told reporters. Disputing Schulte's view, Ali Ashgar Soltanieh, the chief Iranian representative, said the ruling meant "that this project was not deleted ... and therefore we are expecting as soon as possible the decision be made" to provide the requested aid. In Tehran, Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said the IAEA was legally required to provide technical assistance to Iran, a signatory to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. "It is the duty of the IAEA to help. If they help, we will appreciate it. If not, we will do it on our own," Mottaki said. While Iran's pilot uranium enrichment plant at Natanz is under some IAEA monitoring, Iran's offer to open the operating records of the facility could potentially yield key information to U.N. inspectors that has up to now been off limits. "It should tell them how well the centrifuges have operated" in enriching uranium, said former U.N. inspector David Albright, whose Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security tracks Iran's nuclear activities. Such information could verify other evidence that the Iranian program has been hobbled by technical glitches. Iran's records should also help strengthen IAEA findings on the level of the small amounts of uranium enriched since Tehran restarted the program early this year. The agency puts enrichment at 5 percent or below - far from the 90 percent-plus needed to make the core of nuclear bombs. Tehran's other offer to allow IAEA inspectors to look for fresh samples of enriched uranium at a site where earlier finds revealed traces that could have come from an undeclared program linked to the military was described as "important" by a U.N. official. He agreed to discuss the matter only if not quoted by name because he was not authorized to comment publicly. The U.N. Security Council demanded in July that Tehran suspend enrichment, but Iran instead has expanded that work, recently setting up a second experimental chain of 164 centrifuges to produce small amounts of low-enriched uranium. Tehran has said it intends to activate 3,000 centrifuges by late 2006 and then increase the program to 54,000 centrifuges. Iranian officials say that would produce enough enriched uranium to fuel a 1,000-megawatt reactor, such as that being built by Russia and nearing completion at Bushehr. Experts estimate Iran would need only 1,500 centrifuges to produce a nuclear weapon, if it wanted to. |
| Posted by:gorb |