Iran Censured Over Nuclear Program by UN Watchdog
PARIS — One day after the director general of the United Nations nuclear watchdog castigated Iran for blocking inquiries into its nuclear program, the organization’s governing body voted on Friday to censure the country and demanded that it freeze operations “immediately” at a once-secret uranium enrichment plant. The panel also expressed “serious concern” about potential military aspects of Iran’s nuclear program.
The censure resolution, which passed 25-3, came after Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of the International Atomic energy Agency, declared in unusually blunt language on Thursday that Iran had stonewalled investigators about evidence that the country had worked on nuclear weapons design, and that his efforts to reveal the truth had “effectively reached a dead end.”
Dr. ElBaradei is preparing to leave office next week after 12 years at the head of the agency. His remarks refocused attention on Iran’s suspected work on weapons design at a moment when the West is debating how to respond after Tehran backed away from a commitment it made in early October to temporarily send much of its nuclear fuel abroad.
The censure resolution on Friday was the first by the governing body in almost four years.
While 6 of the governing body’s 35 nations abstained, and one was absent, the resolution had unusual backing by Russia and China, broadening the message of international displeasure with Iran that is frequently voiced in the West. But it was not immediately clear whether Moscow and Beijing would go further and support the expansion of sanctions that the Obama administration may promote.
The resolution centered on a uranium enrichment plant that Iran secretly built on an Iranian Revolutionary Guards base near the city of Qum. Until two months ago, Iran had failed to tell the atomic agency about the plant. Iran later said that it had kept the construction secret because it feared that its known nuclear plants could be bombed.
The resolution Friday urged Iran “to comply fully and without delay” with previous United Nations Security Council resolutions on its nuclear program and to “meet the requirements of the board of governors, including by suspending immediately construction at Qum.”
It also urged Iran to clarify the purpose of the enrichment plant and provide a chronology of its design and construction.
The resolution called on Tehran to confirm “that Iran has not taken a decision to construct, or authorize construction of, any other nuclear facility which has as yet not been declared to the agency,” according to diplomats familiar with the text of the resolution.
And it said the watchdog expressed “serious concern” that Iran had not cooperated with the atomic energy body on issues that needed “to be clarified to exclude the possibility of military dimensions to Iran’s nuclear program.” Iran maintains that it wants to develop nuclear power to generate electricity.
Iran’s ambassador to the atomic agency, Ali Asghar Soltanieh, criticized the resolution Friday as “hasty and undue” and said it would “jeopardize the conducive environment vitally needed” for successful negotiations on his country’s nuclear program.
But Glyn Davies, the American ambassador to the agency, said that international patience with Iran was running out and that a group of six world powers negotiating with it could not continue to participate in “round after round” of fruitless talks for talks’ sake, Reuters reported.
President Obama is approaching an end-of-year deadline to reassess whether the United States should move toward what Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has termed “crippling sanctions” on Iran.
Israeli officials, meanwhile, have said that they will not consider taking military action until Mr. Obama’s deadline runs out, leaving hanging the suggestion — maybe the bluff — that they are preparing for that possibility in 2010.
Dr. ElBaradei’s statement on Thursday was a sharp departure in tone, and a tacit acknowledgment that his behind-the-scenes effort to broker a deal had collapsed. In the past, he has privately talked about Iran’s refusal to answer the agency’s questions about weapons work, but has stopped short of rebuking the country in public for fear of shutting off any chance of future cooperation.
Those questions, posed by the agency over a period of years, go to the heart of suspicions that Iran has worked on nuclear weapons designs. They include queries about drawings, computer simulations and other evidence of work that could not plausibly be involved in civilian nuclear power programs.
The evidence includes documents obtained by the agency — some provided by Western intelligence services, which say they were slipped out of Iran by scientists — that appear to show that Iran worked on how to shape uranium for nuclear cores, on conventional explosions needed to detonate a nuclear chain reaction, and on simulations of a warhead detonation at about 2,000 feet, about the height at which the bomb was set off over Hiroshima in 1945.
“It is now well over a year since the agency was last able to engage Iran in discussions about these outstanding issues,” Dr. ElBaradei told the nuclear agency’s governors. “We have effectively reached a dead end, unless Iran engages fully with us.”
In the past, Iran has called the evidence “fabrications.” Dr. ElBaradei has complained that he has been prohibited by “member states,” including the United States and European nations, from letting the Iranians see the original evidence — presumably for fear that it could reveal its sources. On Thursday, he repeated his frustration on that point, telling the agency’s 35-member board that “it would help if we were able to share with Iran more of the material that is at the center of these concerns.”
Dr. ElBaradei’s remarks reinforced the sense that Iran had blocked inspectors from getting near what are known as Project 110 and Project 111, its suspected weapons-design work.
At Iran’s invitation, however, inspectors visited the underground plant at Qum last month, and confirmed it was in the final stages of construction, but not yet operational. It is supposed to house 3,000 centrifuges — the fast-spinning machines used to enrich uranium. That is too small, experts say, to be useful to produce civilian nuclear fuel, but large enough for about two weapons’ worth of material each year.
American officials tried to use Iran’s concealment of that plant, and the possibility that there were related facilities built to produce nuclear material, to press Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and President Hu Jintao of China to join new sanctions. Both have been reluctant, especially Mr. Hu, who said nothing about it when Mr. Obama visited Beijing this month.
Privately, American officials visiting China have sought help to pressure Iran now, warning that if the West moves to sanctions it could affect China’s ability to import oil from Iran. China gets roughly 15 percent of its oil from Iran.
But the central issue in the Iran investigations has been the evidence suggesting that Iran conducted some level of research on weapons. An American intelligence assessment, published two years ago, contended that Iran ceased that work in 2003; intelligence agencies in Britain, France, Germany and Israel, examining the same evidence, have concluded that the work has resumed, or never stopped.
In October, parts of a confidential analysis written by senior staff members of the watchdog agency were leaked. The analysis concluded that Iran had acquired “sufficient information to be able to design and produce a workable” atom bomb. The report’s conclusions went beyond Dr. ElBaradei’s public positions, and even those taken by the United States and several governments.
The analysis drew a picture of a complex program, run by Iran’s Ministry of Defense, “aimed at the development of a nuclear payload to be delivered using the Shahab 3 missile system,” Iran’s medium-range missile, which can strike the Middle East and parts of southern Europe.
Source: New York Times
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