UN/IRAN: The UN's nuclear watchdog sharply rebuked Iran yesterday for not fully co-operating with it, and diplomats said UN inspectors were investigating the possibility that Tehran was hiding another atomic site.
A resolution adopted unanimously by the International Atomic Energy Agency's (IAEA) board of governors said the board "deplores the fact that, overall, Iran's co-operation has not been as full, timely and proactive as it should have been".
The world's leading nuclear body has been investigating Iran since August 2002 and has pushed Tehran to be fully open with UN inspectors as they struggle to limit the spread of weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East.
Co-sponsored by France, Britain and Germany, the final text emerged after days of haggling. Iranian President Mohammad Khatami rejected the draft resolution on Wednesday as "very bad" and threatened to resume uranium enrichment if it was approved.
"We believe the agency acted based on the pressure from some of the political centres, particularly America," Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi told state television.
Mr Hossein Mousavian, Iran's chief delegate at the IAEA board meeting, told reporters that Iran's atomic programme was purely peaceful and US claims that Iran was hiding an atomic weapons programme had been fully disproved by the IAEA.
"After 670 inspections in the past 15 months there is no claim that Iran has deviated from peaceful activities," he said.
However, Washington said Iran had violated its international obligations on non-proliferation and should be reported to the UN Security Council, which can impose economic sanctions.
"The US continues to believe . . . (Iran) should be reported to the UN Security Council and that its nuclear programme presents a threat to international peace and security," the US ambassador to the UN in Vienna, Mr Kenneth Brill, told the board.
However, Washington is in no hurry for a Security Council report as it wants to avoid provoking a crisis with Iran as the US army struggles with insurgents in neighbouring Iraq.
The resolution, penned by Europe's "big three" states, made no mention of the Security Council or any future punitive action if Tehran failed to improve its co-operation with the IAEA, which shows Europe would prefer to engage rather than punish Iran.
British Foreign Secretary Mr Jack Straw welcomed the resolution and said the IAEA process "is the right way to engage Iran".
For now, the IAEA will press on with its intensive investigation of Iran's atomic programme, despite Tehran's demand that inspections be ended and the Iranian nuclear file removed from the agency's agenda.
US undersecretary of state for arms control Mr John Bolton said the resolution "will keep Iran's nuclear programme and its efforts to deceive and obstruct IAEA inspectors at the centre of international attention for quite some time".
IAEA chief Mr Mohamed ElBaradei told reporters that the board wanted urgently to get to the bottom of Iran's nuclear plans. "By the end of the year we will have been doing an inspection in Iran for two years and I think that's long enough time for us to be able to provide the international community with assurances they urgently need," Mr ElBaradei said.
In Tehran, senior conservative cleric Ayatollah Mohammad Emami Kashani said in a Friday prayers sermon, broadcast live on state radio, that Iran did not want the bomb, but would not renounce "its legitimate right to peaceful nuclear technology".
"The West's political commotion about Iran's peaceful nuclear programme is baseless," he said.
New doubts about Iran's honesty arose because satellite photos taken in summer 2003 and March 2004 show buildings razed and top-soil removed at Lavizan Shiyan in Tehran - which Washington said was keeping more atomic secrets from the UN.
Mr ElBaradei said he had discussed the images with the Iranians and that they had assured him there was nothing at the site.