Iran threaten to block nuclear inspections
Iran tonight warned it would block snap inspections of its atomic plants if the country was reported to the UN Security Council in the continuing international row over its nuclear ambitions.
Speaking on Iranian television, Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki was anticipating a session of the International Atomic Energy Agency’s 35-nation board of governors in Vienna, Austria, on Thursday, where Iran’s nuclear programme may be reported to the Security Council.
“Reporting or referring Iran to the UN Security Council is of equal weight,” said Mottaki. “If it happens, the government will be required under the law to end the suspension of all nuclear activities it has voluntarily halted.”
“The first victim will be the additional protocol [intrusive inspections]. If it happens, Iran will definitely terminate its cooperation (with the IAEA) as of Saturday, February 4th,” he said.
Iran insists its nuclear programme is intended only to produce electricity. The United States and some allies say Iran is hiding ambitions to build a nuclear bomb, but the Security Council members have been divided about how strong a line to take.
Meanwhile, an extensive document obtained by Iran on the nuclear black market serves no other purpose than to make an atomic warhead, the International Atomic Energy Agency said today.
The finding was made in a confidential report prepared for presentation to the IAEA board for its Thursday meeting.
First mention of the documents was made late last year in a longer IAEA report. At that time, the agency said only that they showed how to cast “enriched, natural and depleted uranium metal into hemispherical forms”.
While diplomats familiar with the agency probe into Iran’s nuclear programme, speaking anonymously, said at the time that the papers apparently were instructions on how to mould highly enriched uranium into the core of warheads, the agency itself refused to make a judgment on what possible uses such casts would have.
In the brief report obtained by the Associated Press, however, the agency said bluntly that the 15-page document showing how to cast fissile uranium into metal was “related to the fabrication of nuclear weapon components”.
Asked about the finding, a senior diplomat close to the IAEA declined to elaborate but emphasised that the documents had no other use.
The report said the document was under agency seal, meaning that IAEA experts should be able to re-examine it, but “Iran has declined a request to provide the agency with a copy.”
Diplomats familiar with the IAEA’s Iran investigation said earlier in the day that part of the Iranian document was recently given to the agency in an effort to deflect building international momentum to report Iran to the Security Council.
But the IAEA report made no reference to Tehran handing over any part of the papers.
The document in question was given to Iran by members of the nuclear black market network, the IAEA said. Iran has claimed it did not ask for the document but was given it anyway as part of other black market purchases.
The same network provided Libya with drawings of a crude nuclear bomb which that country handed over to the IAEA as part of its 2003 decision to scrap its atomic weapons programme.
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