Author: Bronwen Maddox
Publication: The London Times
Date: November 13, 2003
Iran has told the International
Atomic Energy Agency that it received crucial help from Pakistan with its
controversial nuclear programme, according to those familiar with the negotiations.
Iran revealed the extensive foreign
sources of help to the United Nations nuclear watchdog only in the past
two weeks, The Times has learnt.
After a year of mounting international
alarm that Iran's interest in nuclear power concealed an attempt to develop
nuclear weapons, the regime has admitted that it has gone to great lengths
over 18 years to hide its research.
Iran has now named Pakistan and
several other countries as the source of components and advice used to
make centrifuges to enrich uranium, the most controversial part of its
research.
The atomic energy agency (IAEA)
is now trying to confirm exactly when the assistance was given, and whether
it was from scientists acting on their own or with the backing of their
governments.
Mohamed ElBaradei, the IAEA Director-General,
refers to the foreign contribution several times in the damning 23-page
report on Iran's evasions, which he sent to the agency's board of governors
on Monday. But he does not name the countries or people involved and said
yesterday that he would not be drawn on their identities until the agency
had completed many more investigations.
Maleeha Lodhi, the Pakistani High
Commissioner in London, said yesterday: "No country has been named in the
report. As far as Pakistan is concerned, it is a responsible nuclear power
which has scrupulously observed its non-proliferation obligations."
In an interview with The Times yesterday
Dr ElBaradei said that Iran's success at hiding its nuclear programme for
nearly two decades had been an "eye-opener" for the IAEA. Sanctions had
slowed down Iran's attempts, but in the end had failed, he said.
Iran, as a signatory of the 1970
Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), is entitled to explore nuclear
power for peaceful purposes provided that it is monitored by the IAEA.
However, despite years of supervision,
the agency became suspicious only in the summer of 2002 that the programme
was far more ambitious, sophisticated and older than Iran had admitted.
Dr ElBaradei said that Iran's systematic
covering-up of its programme for years "is by itself a serious matter".
Iran now had all the knowledge it
needed to enrich uranium, Dr ElBaradei said, and had little need of more
foreign help. But its enrichment plants were still far from complete and
it would take the country "probably a few years" to finish. The most controversial
site, at Natanz, "is an empty structure", he said.
Enrichment of uranium has been the
focus of international concerns because, although it is permitted under
the NPT as part of a civil nuclear programme, it takes a country to within
a whisker of the ability to make nuclear weapons.
"The NPT gives you a very thin margin
of security," Dr ElBaradei said . "Once you have the capability (to enrich
uranium), you are not far (from being able to make weapons)."
His report spells out the omissions
and outright lies in Iran's past account of its programme to the IAEA.
But "in the last five weeks (Tehran has shown) a complete change of heart",
he says.
Iran now admits conducting secret
experiments to test its centrifuges with uranium gas, in breach of IAEA
rules. That contradicts its account this summer that some of this gas was
"missing" and must have evaporated through leaky valves. It has also used
lasers, over a 12-year period.
Iran told the IAEA last month that
it had scrapped centrifuges from the Kalaye Electric Company in Tehran
and so inspectors could not see them. Now it has admitted that it moved
them elsewhere and finally allowed inspectors to see them on October 30.
Dr ElBaradei's report, packed with
examples of Iran's brinkmanship, says that in the past three months Iran
has admitted eight serious breaches of the rules.
It concludes: "It is clear that
Iran has failed in a number of instances over an extended period of time
to meet its obligations" under its agreement with the IAEA.
However, the Director- General has
pointedly not used the words "non-compliance" about Iran's behaviour, which
would almost compel the governors to refer it to the UN Security Council.
Instead, he emphasises that the
disclosures and pledges are "a positive development", that IAEA analysts
need time to weigh them up and that he will report to the governors again
in March.
"We should not tolerate breaches,
whether small or large," he told The Times, "but we should (also) focus
. . . on the new chapter, and on the complexity of the task facing the
IAEA." This measured tone is likely to strip some of the significance from
the board of governors' meeting on November 20.
His deliberate impartiality is also
likely to disappoint the United States, which had hoped that next Thursday's
meeting would agree on a tough stance against Iran.
There were signs of tension yesterday
between Washington and Jack Straw over the appropriate response to Dr ElBaradei's
conclusions. The Foreign Secretary has favoured dialogue with Tehran, rather
than a showdown in the UN. To Dr ElBaradei, the dispute with Iran illustrates
the wider problems at the heart of the non-proliferation treaty.
"What I'd like to see is an addition
to the NPT," he said, where countries would agree to pool the most sensitive
technologies, such as enrichment, rather than doing it all for themselves.
That would have to apply to the
five nuclear weapons countries that are the permanent members of the Security
Council - Britain, the US, France, Russia and China, who "cannot continue
to put the screws on the rest of the world" while offering no concessions.
In its current form, as an uneasy bargain between states with nuclear weapons
and those without them, the treaty "is not sustainable", he concludes.
Weapons claim 'impossible to believe' says US hawk
Washington: John Bolton, the US
Under-Secretary of State, delivered a damning verdict on the IAEA report
last night, dismissing as "impossible to believe" its findings that there
is no evidence of Iran pursuing a nuclear weapons programme.
The most hawkish member of the State
Department insisted: "The United States believes that the massive and covert
Iranian effort to acquire sensitive nuclear capabilities make sense only
as part of a nuclear weapons programme . . . The international community
now has to determine whether Iran has come clean on this programme and
how to react to the large number of serious violations to which Iran has
admitted."
