The Hindu : IAEA wants Iran to allow inspections

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Jun 20, 2003

International

International

IAEA wants Iran to allow inspections

By George Chakko

Vienna June 19. In a nervously discussed issue on the International Atomic Energy Agency's Board of Governors (BoG) agenda, Iran´s nuclear ambitions came under U.S.- pressure, wanting Iran to immediately sign, ratify, and implement the Additional Protocol allowing ad-hoc spot verification any time wished.

A statement from the IAEA said questions on safeguards were still open and Iran was not to introduce "nuclear material at the pilot enrichment plan". The IAEA was convinced that Iran had the potential to build nuclear bombs. Iran's complaint was that there might have been few lapses of negligible amount of radioactive material, which it said was either leaked or harmless, compared to what other member-countries of the IAEA's, NPT regime did.

Iran is a signatory to the NPT. But it imported nuclear material without reporting to the IAEA, and the U.S. Ambassador to the BoG warned, quoting the IAEA Director-General's report of February this year: "... Uranium metal is required to make fissile components for HEU-type nuclear weapons".

The Iranian delegate, Alireza Esmaeli, told The Hindu: "All our programmes are known to the IAEA. We have no weapon ambition. We signed the NPT long before and accepted IAEA safeguards. The only reactor left is the new 1000 MW reactor just beginning to be built and it will take years for it to be completed. Our only obligation under the NPT is to inform the IAEA 180 days prior to the installation of fuel rods into the reactor. But not now, it is too early. We are just at the beginning of reactor-building. We shall do that when the time is ripe for it."

When pointed out that the U.S. had the suspicion that Iran, like North Korea, would get out of the NPT once it had the technology and means for the bombs, he said: "You see, it is not that simple. But N. Korea is a military dictatorship with military ambitions. We are not."

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